The Tony nominations got most of the attention, with the customary “stars, snubs and surprises” analyses, but the nominations for three other awards were also announced within a week, the Off-Broadway winners of the Lucille Lortel awards were feted last night, and the selections of the Pulitzer Prizes, the Theatre World Awards, and the New York Drama Circle Awards will each be announced later today. Over the next month, we’ll learn the results of some half dozen or so major New York theater awards, and others, culminating in the Tony Awards ceremony on June 8th.
Meanwhile, in May, theater is being made every day. The struggle to do so promises to become more complicated, given the news from Washington. A new Off-Broadway play that opened this weekend dramatizing a successful fight in the 1930s for freedom of expression feels in this moment less timely than nostalgic.
Broadway Season Closer Quiz 2025
May 2025 New York Theater Openings
The Week in New York Theater Awards
78th annual Tony Award nominations: Buena Vista Social Club, Death Becomes Her, and Maybe Happy Ending lead in nominations, each receiving ten.
Analysis of nominations (aka snubs and surprises) from the New York Times, Variety, Deadline, People. LA Times
Honoring 10 who were NOT Tony-nominated
Special Tony Awards:
Celia Keenan-Bolger will receive the 2025 Isabelle Stevenson Tony Award for her unwavering dedication to advocacy work through the arts. Among her charitable and activist work: Serving as an “artist-ambassador” for the New York Civil Liberties Union, creating the Activist Artist Endowed Scholarship Fund at the University of Michigan, and training as an end-of-life doula, providing counsel to those facing the end of their lives, as she did for her good friend Gavin Creel.
2025 Tony Honors for Excellence in the Theater will be given to Great Performances, the cultural showcase on PBS; Michael Price, longtime executive director of Goodspeed Musicals, New 42, best known for launching New Victory Theater; and The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Now celebrating its 60th anniversary.
Drama Desk Award Nominations 2025
Theater Award Stars by Consensus
Jonathan Groff and Jasmine Amy Rogers were nominated for all four theater awards that were announced over the past week, he for portraying Bobby Darin in “Just in Time,” she for the title role in “Boop!” They were the only performers to be nominated in all four awards, including the Chita Rivera Awards, which honors dancers. But eight other stars received a perhaps telling consensus among the other three awards — the Tonys, the Drama Desk and the Outer Critics Circle, although there are different nominators for each of these awards, and their aims, categories and eligibility criteria differ.
The Week in New York Theater Reviews
The 1933 trial that ended the US ban against James Joyce’s “Ulysses” for obscenity is viewed as a significant victory for free expression, almost as much of a landmark in legal circles as the novel itself is a landmark for lovers of literature. “The United States vs. Ulysses,” which has opened tonight at the Irish Arts Center, takes on both landmarks. It stages the court case while intertwining dramatized excerpts from Joyce’s novel. Irish playwright Colin Murphy elucidates the legal arguments, doing justice to both sides, and even illuminates some aspects of the famously complex novel. All this is presented in a production that is often playful and entertaining, but also works too hard at being inventive.
The Week in New York Theater News
The Trump administration’s proposed budget eliminates funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), and Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which provides funding for both PBS and NPR These cuts are part of a broader proposal to reduce non-defense discretionary spending by more than twenty percent, while significantly increasing funding for defense and homeland security.
Al Vincent, Jr., executive director of Actors’ Equity Association: “We will fight to protect this critical funding that generates a huge return on investment in local communities.”
“Democrats and arts advocates promised to try to fight to save the agency. Mr. Trump had also tried to eliminate the arts endowment during his first term in office, but it was saved with the support of congressional Republicans as well as Democrats. It is not yet clear whether the agency still has bipartisan support in the current political climate” (NYTimes)
Meanwhile, on Friday the NEA sent out a slew of abrupt notices that terminated or withdrew funds that had been offered for the 2025 fiscal year.
Among the many recipients of such a notice was the Classical Theatre of Harlem, whose funding was cut for its summer production of “Memnon,” a contemporary retelling of the story of the legendary Ethiopian king of the Trojan War.. “This puts at risk not only a free public performance that reaches over 30,000 audience members annuall—but also hundreds of jobs for artists, crew, and local vendors, and over $600K in economic impact for Harlem,” the theater said in a statement.
Redwood will close on Broadway on Sunday, May 18, 2025, having played 127 performances, including 17 previews. The musical starring and conceived by Idina Menzel failed to receive any Tony nominations.
In Memoriam
Ruth Buzzi, 88, famed for her characters on Laugh-In. She was on Broadway in the original production of Sweet Charity in 1966.
Stephen Mo Hanan, 78, Kevin Kline’s lieutenant in the acclaimed 1981 Broadway production of “The Pirates of Penzance” and three felines in the original Broadway cast of “Cats,”
Jill Sobule, 66, singer-songwriter behind the gay anthem ‘I Kissed a Girl.” She performed her solo show F*CK7thGRADE, last year at The Wild Project.
