Who should win Tony Awards, and who will win?

Boston Globe

21 hours ago

Will/Should win:
'Maybe Happy Ending'
Also nominated:
'Buena Vista Social Club,' 'Dead Outlaw,' 'Death Becomes Her,' 'Operation Mincemeat'
'Operation Mincemeat,' a scrappy British comedy about an improbable scheme to trick the Nazis using a corpse with a fake identity, is an amusingly ribald farce until it turns tiresome and wan. 'Buena Vista Social Club,' inspired by the celebrated 1996 album by veteran Cuban musicians, comes most alive in the invigorating music and propulsive dancing. With sardonic songs and a sharp-witted book, 'Death Becomes Her' is a delicious and demented story about two frenemies who launch an absurdly escalating battle after they discover a potion that grants eternal life. Yet the big showdown here pits 'Dead Outlaw,'
another
idiosyncratic musical about a corpse, against 'Maybe Happy Ending,' an inventive, electrifying show about two robots falling in love. The former boasts mordant humor and a rollicking garage-rock score to tell the strange story of a lawbreaker who finds infamy in the afterlife as a sideshow cadaver. The latter is a heartbreaking budding romance between two androids that's really about our own humanity — the connections we share, the nature of consciousness, and the ephemerality of life itself. Either would be a worthy choice.
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Best play
Will win:
'Oh, Mary!'
Should win:
'John Proctor Is the Villain'
Also nominated:
'Purpose,' 'The Hills of California,' 'English'
Sanaz Toossi's Pulitzer Prize winner, 'English,' paints a compelling portrait of Iranian adults preparing for an English proficiency exam, but the drama never really lifts off. Jez Butterworth's 'The Hills of California' moves with propulsive energy to its shattering climax in a story that shifts between an ambitious mother in 1950s England and her adult daughters, in various states of wreckage, returning to their childhood home years later. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' 'Purpose,' which recently won the Pulitzer Prize, centers on a political clan led by a towering civil rights pioneer. As the secrets, lies, recriminations, and resentments come tumbling out during a fraught gathering, the play rides a roller coaster of juicy drama. Kimberly Belflower's riveting and timely 'John Proctor Is the Villain,'
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Best revival of a musical
Will win:
'Sunset Boulevard'
Should win:
'Gypsy'
Also nominated:
'Floyd Collins,' 'Pirates! The Penzance Musical'
Adam Guettel and Tina Landau's fact-based 'Floyd Collins,' about a scrappy spelunker trapped inside a Kentucky cave whose plight captures the attention of the nation, has a soaring score but can feel more diffuse than gripping at times. 'Pirates!' is frolicsome fun, with writer Rupert Holmes riotously revamping the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, and David Hyde Pierce delivering a deadpan rendition of the tongue-twisting 'Modern Major-General Song.' But this is a two-horse race between Jamie Lloyd's radical reinvention of Andrew Lloyd Webber's lugubrious 'Sunset Boulevard' and the fifth Broadway revival of the landmark musical 'Gypsy.' The George C. Wolfe-directed production examines the racial implications of Rose and her children being played by Black women, with Audra McDonald delivering a revelatory 'Rose's Turn.' Yet voters may choose 'Sunset' due to Lloyd's post-modern revitalization, which features live video and camera crews following actors around onstage (and out of the theater!), beamed onto a 23-foot-tall screen. The pictures may have gotten bigger here, but does that make a winning musical?
Francis Jue, left, and Daniel Dae Kim in "Yellow Face."
Joan Marcus
Best revival of a play
Will/Should win:
'Yellow Face'
Also nominated:
'Eureka Day,' 'Our Town,' 'Romeo + Juliet'
The rave-inspired adaptation of 'Romeo + Juliet,' starring Kit Connor and Rachel Zegler as the star-crossed lovers, was wildly engaging, if unfocused and over-stylized. Jonathan Spector's 'Eureka Day' made a case for extreme relevancy with its explosive satire of woke parents dealing with a mumps outbreak at an elite private school and a heated vaccination debate that erupts. The play's pièce-de-résistance is a virtual meeting that goes off the rails, with the characters looking on in horror at the increasingly vitriolic live-streamed commentary. Still, 'Eureka Day' may be overtaken by David Henry Hwang's hall-of-mirrors farce 'Yellow Face,'
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Joy Woods, left, and Audra McDonald.
Julieta Cervantes/Photo: Julieta Cervantes
Best leading actress in a musical
Will/Should win:
Audra McDonald, 'Gypsy'
Also nominated:
Nicole Scherzinger, 'Sunset Boulevard'; Megan Hilty, 'Death Becomes Her'; Jennifer Simard, 'Death Becomes Her'; Jasmine Amy Rogers, 'Boop! The Musical'
This category is usually chock-a-block with battling Broadway divas, and this year is no exception. Broadway newcomer Rogers,
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Best leading actor in a musical
Will/Should win:
Darren Criss, 'Maybe Happy Ending'
Also nominated:
Jonathan Groff, 'Just in Time'; Jeremy Jordan, 'Floyd Collins'; Tom Francis, 'Sunset Boulevard'; Andrew Durand, 'Dead Outlaw'; James Monroe Iglehart, 'A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical'
This category is rife with nominees pulling off head-turning theatrical stunts. A smoldering Francis, as disillusioned screenwriter Joe Gillis,
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Sarah Snook in "The Picture of Dorian Gray."
Marc Brenner
Best leading actress in a play
Will/Should win:
Sarah Snook, 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'
Also nominated:
Laura Donnelly, 'The Hills of California'; Mia Farrow, 'The Roommate'; LaTanya Richardson Jackson, 'Purpose'; Sadie Sink, 'John Proctor Is the Villain'
Farrow, 80, transformed from a mousy naif to a scheming thrill-seeker after befriending a streetwise grifter in 'The Roommate.' Donnelly, too, made a radical transformation playing dual roles — as a stage mother desperate to turn her daughters into singing stars, and the prodigal child who returns decades later, world-weary and broken. Richardson Jackson imbues her matriarch with mama-bear warmth and formidable forcefulness as she bends the other family members to her will. Then there's 'Stranger Things' ingenue Sink, as a fierce, combustible teenager who calls out the BS and blows the whistle on some bad behavior. But can anyone beat 'Succession' powerhouse Snook? Not bloody likely. In a cutting-edge adaptation of Oscar Wilde's transgressive novel, Snook delivers a wry, virtuosic solo performance, bringing to life 26 different characters who are
Best leading actor in a play
Will/Should win:
Cole Escola, 'Oh, Mary!'
Also nominated:
George Clooney, 'Good Night, and Good Luck'; Jon Michael Hill, 'Purpose'; Harry Lennix, 'Purpose'; Louis McCartney, 'Stranger Things: The First Shadow'; Daniel Dae Kim, 'Yellow Face'
Will Clooney win for his Broadway debut as legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow in the adaptation of his 2005 film. Don't bet on it. The play,