Watch one- or two-minute videos from each of the five musicals nominated for the 2024 Tony Award for Best Musical: “Hell’s Kitchen,” “Illinoise,” “The Outsiders,” “Suffs” and “Water for Elephants.”

Hell’s Kitchen

from my review: “Alicia Keys’ lively, tuneful musical is not her musical biography, nor, despite the title, is it about the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood where she grew up. It’s really a jukebox musical, which is to say, an efficient delivery system for Alicia Keys’ songs – two dozen of them, although three of them are newly composed for the show. Yes, Alicia Keys songs are organized to tell a story loosely based on a moment in Alicia Keys’ life:  At the age of 17,  Ali (portrayed by Maleah Joi Moon, making an impressive professional debut)  pursues a boy and discovers the piano while rebelling against her strict mother, Jersey (Soshana Bean.)…”

Illinoise

from my review: “Illinoise is extraordinary, it’s queer, it’s often thrilling. But it could probably use a warning label.  This stage interpretation of Sufjan Stevens’ album “Illinois” could be mistakenly assumed to be a Broadway jukebox musical, given Stevens’ already popular score and the marquee names involved in adapting it for the stage…But “Illinoise” is not a conventional Broadway musical. It’s a dance theater piece, and unconventional even as that….”

The Outsiders

from my review: “An exciting cast of gifted young performers, a lovely if little-varied folk and country score, and some thrillingly muscular, almost cinematic choreography are all employed to tell a story that’s been told many times before [especially in] the two landmark works on which “The Outsiders” is directly based: S.E. Hinton’s 1967 novel and Francis Ford Coppola’s 1983 movie.”

Suffs

from my review “I found Shaina Taub’s musical “Suffs,”  a show about the final seven-year push to win American women the right to vote, inspiring, instructive and entertaining when I saw it two years ago Off Broadway…Much has changed in “Suffs,” almost all for the better: The show is more streamlined, more focused…”

Water for Elephants

from my review: What’s most awe-inspiring about this musical adaptation of Sara Gruen’s 2006 bestselling novel is the Big Top-like entertainment, especially the heart-stopping acrobatics, which are not just athletically spectacular but often visually beautiful and emotionally expressive, enhancing the dancing and even advancing the story. Much else in “Water for Elephants” has its pleasures – the score, the singing, the puppetry, the acting, even the love story —  but nothing else matches the circus artistry for its originality, variety and consistency.