Of the 29 shows that were nominated for Tony Awards, only 11 took home a trophy. Of these, only nine are still running — and four of them are closing as soon as three weeks from now. Below is a guide to these Tony-winning shows, with a video of the Tony performance for the five musicals, a link to each show’s webpage and directly to its tickets page, discounts available (for details and links, go to my post Broadway Rush and Lottery Policies), and an excerpt of my review (with a link to the whole thing), which doesn’t necessarily align with the views of the majority of Tony voters.
Closing Soon
Organized by the date they’re closing.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Music Box Theater
Closing: June 29
Tony wins: 2. Best Performance By An Actress In A Leading Role In A Play (Sarah Snook.) Best Costume Design of a Play.
My review: Sarah Snook portrays some 25 characters as well as the narrator in this dazzling and sometimes dizzying stage-and-video adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s novel, but at the curtain call, she is far from alone: Fourteen other people, all dressed in black, take their bows with her [eg camera operators, dresser] who make Snook’s performance possible. They, and especially video designer David Bergman, also help turn writer and director Kip Williams’s adaptation of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” into a visually clever, technically sophisticated production for which “solo play” feels like an inadequate description….“The Picture of Dorian Gray” runs two hours without an intermission, and I’ll confess that near the end its increasingly frantic pace and horror movie vibe began to tire me out – making me even more impressed with Sarah Snook’s endurance.
Tickets
Discounts: Digital lottery and general rush, both $49
Sunset Blvd
St. James Theater
Closing: July 20
Tony wins: 2. Best Revival of a Musical. Best Performance By An Actress In A Leading Role In A Musical. (Nicole Scherzinger)
My review: All eyes in “Sunset Blvd” have been focused on the fierce, full-throated and humongously-photographed performance by Nicole Scherzinger as Norma Desmond, the once-reigning silent movie queen long deposed and now delusional…[in] this second Broadway revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s overblown 1994 musical melodrama, which is helmed by the fashionable British director Jamie Lloyd in his signature style… ostentatiously minimalist, vividly colorless… I concede how adeptly this production pulls off many of its effects – technically, visually, in the movement of the cast — even as I don’t understand why they have undertaken to do so.
Tickets
Discounts: Digital lottery, digital rush, general rush, standing room only, all $45
Purpose
Second Stage’s Hayes Theater
Closing: August 31
Tony wins: 2. Best Play. Best Performance By An Actress In A Featured Role In A Play (Kara Young)
My review: ‘Purpose,” is an extraordinary play by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Tony winner for last season’s “Appropriate”) in a terrifically acted, crowd-pleasing production that marks Phylicia Rashad’s Broadway directorial debut…Jacobs-Jenkins is clearly inspired by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and his family – not just their accomplishments, but their scandals….“Purpose” has a running time of three hours (including intermission) which is perhaps twenty minutes longer than it needs to be…Even so, it is a consistently entertaining play, and something more, a subtle, intelligent contemplation of the various ways the characters search for purpose, and how sweet it is to have one.
Tickets
Digital rush, general rush, both $45
Oh, Mary!
Lyceum Theater
Closing September 28
Tony wins: 2. Best Performance By An Actor In A Leading Role In A Play (Cole Escola.) Best Director of a Play
My review: By the end of “Oh, Mary!,” we have learned that First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln was a homicidally bitter alcoholic and frustrated cabaret singer married to a vicious closet homosexual whose assassination didn’t go down the way we were taught. This is not meant to be historically accurate, of course; that’s beside the point. The point is to make the audience laugh. So, what if you don’t find this alternative history all that funny? Then you’d find yourself apparently out of step with the theatergoers who turned Cole Escola’s eighty-minute exercise in camp into a hit….Escola is unquestionably talented – facial contortions reminiscent of I Love Lucy, a hoop skirt evocative of Carol Burnett as Scarlett O’Hara wearing the curtains in her famous Went with the Wind sketch…
Tickets
Discounts: Digital lottery, $47, general rush, $43
OPEN RUNS
organized by number and weight of Tony wins
Maybe Happy Ending
Belasco Theater
Tony wins: 6. Best Musical. Best Book of a Musical. Best Score of a Musical. Best Performance by a Leading Role in a Musical (Darren Criss). Best Direction of a Musical. Best Scenic Design of a Musical.
My review: In forty years, there will still be fireflies, and there will still be love. But fireflies will only still exist on Jeju Island near Seoul, Korea, and when Oliver and Claire (Darren Criss and Helen J. Shen) travel there to see them, they don’t realize yet that they’re in love. As robots, the two are not programmed for that emotion.
“Maybe Happy Ending” starts out cute, combining the conventions of several familiar genres — science fiction, romantic comedy, road trip, chamber musical — for what at first seems as light and evanescent as those fireflies. But it somehow turns into something just as rare – an original show, charmingly acted and cleverly staged, with a touching take on love and mortality
Tickets
Discounts: Digital lottery and digital rush, $45, general rush, $40
Buena Vista Social Club
Gerald Schoenfeld Theater
Tony wins 5: Special Award (non-competitive) for the band. Best Performance By An Actress In A Featured Role In A Musical (Natalie Venetia Belcon). Best Choreography. Best Orchestrations, Best Sound Design.
My review: As a band and a brand, “Buena Vista Social Club” has been gold from the get-go: It was a hit Grammy-winning album that in 1996 had brought together an impromptu group of old-time Cuban musicians into a vintage 1950s recording studio in Havana. The album’s popularity turned some long-forgotten musicians into stars, which led to international tours, an acclaimed 1999 documentary, and then another film 18 years later. In 2023, it became an exciting Off-Broadway musical. “Buena Vista Social Club” is now an even better Broadway musical.
With many of the same multitalented singers, dancers and musicians who performed Off-Broadway, the show gets a far larger stage and more elaborate sound system for its electrifying concert of addictive rhythmic Cuban music. It again overlays a plot that alternates between two timelines — the making of the album in 1996, and the lives of the musicians involved forty years earlier, both eras still centering around singer Omara Portuondo, who is portrayed In the 1990s by Natalie Venetia Belcon and in the 1950s by newcomer Isa Antonetti.
In the transfer to Broadway, the plot is sharper, and the musical numbers even more engaging.
Tickets
Discounts: Digital lottery, $49, general rush, $45
Stranger Things: The First Shadow
Marquis Theater
Tony wins: 4. Special Award (non-competitive) for illusions and special effects. Best Scenic Design Of A Play. Best Lighting Design Of A Play. Best Sound Design Of A Play.
My review: Netflix claims it is a “standalone adventure.” This is simply not true, especially if they mean that theatergoers need not be familiar with the streaming platform’s popular sci-fi horror series. “Stranger Things: The First Shadow” is strictly for fans of “Stranger Things,” presenting both a prequel and an origin story that feature several characters from the series….Those who don’t know the series get smoke and mirrors.
Admittedly, they’re spectacular smoke and mirrors, state-of-the-art, high-tech, costly, intense — smoke volcanically erupting from the ground or gruesomely pouring out of bodies; mirrors suddenly cracking or shattering…many “whoaaa” special effects accompanied by shrieks, crackles and booms loud enough to feel in your seat…As for making sense of it all: The best the novice can hope for is that the cacophony, convolution and confusion on stage will finally prod him to join the addicted screen-watching horde to figure out the point of it all. Truthfully, Stranger viewers are not immune to the confusion…
Tickets
Discounts: Digital lottery, $45, general rush, $40
Operation Mincemeat
John Golden Theater
Tony wins: 1. Best Performance By An Actor In A Featured Role In A Musical (Jak Malone)
My review: In “Operation Mincemeat,” SpitLip wanted to tell a strange true story, but also have a frenetic fringe/ sketch comedy type of fun. Sometimes these two aims felt at cross purposes. But there are moments when the musical seems to take the history seriously. At one point, Malone as the older secretary Hester Leggett sings “Dear Bill,” a sweet ballad in which she’s trying to create a fictional love letter to the fictional dead officer to lend his existence more credibility. It becomes clear she is really thinking about her own love, lost in the war. In a show that works so hard to be entertaining, it’s the simple song that brings the story home.
Tickets
Discounts: Digital lottery, $39, in-person rush, $49
Death Becomes Her
Lunt-Fontanne Theater
Tony wins: 1. Best costume design.
My review: “Death Becomes Her,” a stylishly macabre Broadway musical comedy about a love/hate triangle, has much the same plot, catty repartee, and even some of the same comically gruesome special effects as the 1992 Meryl Streep/Goldie Hawn/Bruce Willis movie on which it is based. Although not as starry a draw as their cinematic predecessors, Megan Hilty, Jennifer Simard and Christopher Sieber — all Broadway favorites — do a fine job in the principal roles, and there are several memorable supporting players. But if I’m being honest, one theater artist stood out for me: Paul Tazewell, the costume designer.
Tickets
Discounts; Digital lottery, $40, in-person rush, $45
