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      2025 Tony Awards: George Clooney, Sarah Snook and Sadie Sink Among Nominees

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      The new musicals “Buena Vista Social Club,” “Death Becomes Her” and “Maybe Happy Ending” tied for the most Tony nominations, with 10 each.George Clooney, Mia Farrow, Sarah Snook and Sadie Sink all picked up Tony nominations on Thursday as Broadway began its celebration of an unusually starry season.In a robust season with 14 new musicals, three tied for the most nominations, with 10 each: “Buena Vista Social Club,” “Death Becomes Her” and “Maybe Happy Ending.” And Audra McDonald, who has already won a record six competitive Tony Awards, set another record: she picked up her 11th nomination for her role in “Gypsy,” making her the most-nominated performer ever.The nominations were announced at the end of the most robust Broadway season since the pandemic. Box office grosses are approaching prepandemic levels amid a bumper crop of 42 show openings. Several productions have drawn much-desired young audiences, and the season featured a mix of quirky and original shows alongside big-brand spectacle. But the industry faces challenges too: Ticket prices, especially for the hottest shows, have become out-of-reach for many, and fewer shows are turning a profit as the cost of producing has risen.The closely watched race for best new musical, bizarrely enough, features three shows concerning dead bodies: “Dead Outlaw,” which tells the story of a train robber whose corpse became an attraction; “Operation Mincemeat,” about a strange-but-true World War II British intelligence operation involving disinformation planted on a corpse, and “Death Becomes Her,” a stage adaptation of the film about two undead frenemies. The other two contenders are “Buena Vista Social Club,” about the group of beloved Cuban musicians, and “Maybe Happy Ending,” about a relationship between two robots.Hue Park, who wrote “Maybe Happy Ending” with Will Aronson, said the nominations affirmed a stunning turnaround for the show. “We had a very rough start, and we were not sure if the show would stay running,” Park said. “Being an original story, not based on famous IP, was the biggest challenge in the beginning, but at the same time for that reason the entire theater community has tried to support us, and that is one of the main reasons the show is still surviving and getting these nominations.”Three new musicals tied for the most nominations, with 10 each: “Maybe Happy Ending,” “Buena Vista Social Club” and “Death Becomes Her.” We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tony Nominations Snubs and Surprises: Denzel Washington Misses for ‘Othello’ and More

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      Ensemble-driven plays like “Purpose” and “English” received a slew of nominations, while Denzel Washington, Jake Gyllenhaal and Idina Menzel were overlooked.Stars abounded. Attendance rebounded. Performers raised the roof and so did ticket prices. This was a big season for Broadway, finally achieving a credible post-Covid rebuild — but as what? Think of the Tony Award nominations as tea leaves, hinting at where the commercial theater has been and predicting where it’s going. And also, with 29 of the 42 eligible productions receiving nods, offering plenty of opportunities to celebrate surprises and bemoan omissions (or vice versa).A boys’ club, but women rule.To look at this season’s plays you would think Broadway was still a boys’ club. Men dominated the dramatic leading roles; many nonmusicals had no leading actresses at all. That left just nine women eligible for the standard five nominations, unless you count separately each of the 26 characters played by Sarah Snook in “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” (She nabbed just one nod.) But on the musical side of the ledger, women totally ruled, with so many star performances that some of Broadway’s biggest names were inevitably going to be snubbed. After the Sondheim revue “Old Friends” shuffled Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga into the supporting category — which didn’t get them nominated anyway — that still left Adrienne Warren (“The Last Five Years”), Sutton Foster (“Once Upon a Mattress”) and Idina Menzel (“Redwood”) out in the cold. Especially Menzel, who in the course of that eco-musical sang a dozen songs while climbing a 200-foot tree and dancing upside-down in midair. As she proved in “Wicked,” it’s not easy being green.‘Othello’ takes it in the back.“My heart is turned to stone. I strike it, and it hurts my hand.” That’s Shakespeare’s Othello talking, but it could well be the cast and creative team of the Broadway revival, which received not a single Tony nomination. Most notably, both Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal were shut out in the category of lead actor in a play, which even made room for an unusual six nominees. “Romeo + Juliet” the season’s other Shakespeare production that drew mixed reviews, did squeak in for best revival of a play. Then again, the “Othello” producers didn’t take the blow lying down; within minutes of the nominations announcement, they issued a news release indicating that the show, which has been earning upward of $3 million a week during its limited run, had recouped its costs.George Clooney gets lucky.“Good Night, and Good Luck,” the other box office blockbuster of the spring, was always an iffy proposition for best new play, given that it closely resembles the screenplay of the 2005 film on which it is based. Still, Tony nominators paid tribute to its co-writer/star/man of conscience George Clooney with a nod as best lead actor in a play for his grave and bracing depiction of the 1950s-era watchdog journalist Edward R. Murrow. The show’s timing paid off — not to mention the star’s willingness to dye his hair oil-black for his Broadway debut.It’s all in the family for ‘Purpose.’Last year, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s “Appropriate” was nominated for eight Tony Awards. “Purpose,” his play about a prominent Black political family didn’t quite best that, but five of its six nominations were in the acting categories, an unusually high number for an ensemble-driven play in which the dining room pyrotechnics are apportioned so equally. (Sadly there was no place at the Tonys table for Alana Arenas, who gave a glamorous and explosive turn as the daughter-in-law, Morgan.) Sanaz Toossi’s “English” and Kimberly Belflower’s “John Proctor Is the Villain,” two other ensemble-powered dramas, netted three acting nominations each.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tony Awards Nominations 2025: Updating List

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      Nominations for the 78th Tony Awards will be announced on Thursday morning. See below for a live list of nominees.The Tony Awards nominations are here. And it’s been a starry Broadway season, with a host of new plays and musicals as well as a bounty of screen actors.George Clooney is starring in “Good Night, and Good Luck,” and Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal have been sparring as Othello and Iago.Stars of HBO’s “Succession” have also flocked to the stage: Sarah Snook plays Dorian Gray, Lord Henry Wotton and 24 other characters in “The Picture of Dorian Gray”; Kieran Culkin makes deals as a wily salesman in “Glengarry Glen Ross”; and earlier in the season Sydney Lemmon and Peter Friedman did a pas de deux as a twisted patient and therapist duo in “Job.”The nominees for this year’s Tony Awards, which are presented by the Broadway League and the American Theater Wing, will be announced Thursday morning by the Tony winners Sarah Paulson and Wendell Pierce.Some of the top contenders for a best new musical nomination include “Operation Mincemeat,” a British comedy about a planted corpse; “Maybe Happy Ending,” a sweet tale of two robots grappling with love and obsolescence; and “Buena Vista Social Club,” a joyous flashback to the Havana music scene inspired by the 1997 album.Select nominations will air on CBS at 8:30 a.m. E.D.T. The remaining categories will be announced on the official Tony Awards YouTube page at 9 a.m. The full list of nominees will be available at TonyAwards.com immediately after the broadcast and livestream.The 78th Tony Awards are planned for June 8 at Radio City Music Hall. The ceremony’s host will be Cynthia Erivo, a 2016 Tony winner for her role as Celie in “The Color Purple,” who is fresh off a whirlwind year of “Wicked” press tours and an Oscar nomination.Follow below for a full list of nominees, which will be updated as the announcements are made.Best Leading Actress in a PlayLaura Donnelly, “The Hills of California”Read our profile.Mia Farrow, “The Roommate”LaTanya Richardson Jackson, “Purpose”Read our review.Sadie Sink, “John Proctor Is the Villain”Read our profile.Sarah Snook, “The Picture of Dorian Gray”Read our feature.Best Leading Actor in a PlayGeorge Clooney, “Good Night, and Good Luck”Read our profile.Cole Escola, “Oh, Mary!”Read our profile.John Michael Hill, “Purpose”Read our review.Daniel Dae Kim, “Yellowface”Read our profile.Harry Lennix, “Purpose”Read our review.Louis McCartney, “Stranger Things: The First Shadow”Read our review.Best Leading Actress in a MusicalJasmine Amy Rogers, “Boop!”Read our feature.Megan Hilty, “Death Becomes Her”Read our feature.Audra McDonald, “Gypsy”Read our feature.Nicole Scherzinger, “Sunset Boulevard”Read our profile.Jennifer Simard, “Death Becomes Her”Read our feature. More

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      2025 Tony Nominations Announcement: What to Know and How to Watch

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      Sarah Paulson and Wendell Pierce will announce which performers and which productions from a crowded 2024-25 Broadway season will vie for awards.Broadway has lots to brag about this season: a bumper crop of 42 Tony-eligible plays and musicals, lots of movie stars treading the boards, several productions that are drawing young audiences, and a healthy mix of quirky and original shows alongside big-brand spectacle.On Thursday, the industry begins its annual celebration of the best of Broadway with the announcement of this year’s Tony Awards nominees. Over the next five weeks, Tony voters will finish seeing the latest shows, and will then cast their ballots for the productions and performances they admired most. On June 8, the awards ceremony will take place at Radio City Music Hall.The Tony Awards are presented by the Broadway League and the American Theater Wing. Here’s what to know about the nominations:When is the announcement?The Tony Award nominations will be announced Thursday morning in New York by the actors Sarah Paulson and Wendell Pierce. A few marquee categories will be announced at 8:30 Eastern on “CBS Mornings,” and then the full slate will be revealed at 9 a.m. on the Tony Awards YouTube channel. (We’ll publish the list of nominees, along with news and commentary, at nytimes.com/theater.)Which shows are eligible?The 21 plays and 21 musicals that opened on Broadway between April 26, 2024, and April 27, 2025, are eligible. (This season also included a two-week concert run by Ben Platt; that show is not Tony-eligible.)What show and which actors are the leading contenders?Keep an eye on “Maybe Happy Ending,” “Dead Outlaw” and “Buena Vista Social Club” in the best musical category, and “Purpose,” “John Proctor Is the Villain” and “Oh, Mary!” in the new play category. (There will be at least five nominations in each of those categories.)There are a number of strong contenders for best actress in a musical, but the front-runners seem to be Audra McDonald, already a six-time Tony winner, for “Gypsy,” and Nicole Scherzinger, a former member of the Pussycat Dolls, for “Sunset Boulevard.” The race for best actor in a musical is more open, but is likely to feature Darren Criss of “Maybe Happy Ending,” Andrew Durand of “Dead Outlaw,” Tom Francis of “Sunset Boulevard,” Jonathan Groff of “Just in Time” and Jeremy Jordan of “Floyd Collins.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Ceremonies in Dark Old Men’ Review: A Father in Defeat

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      Norm Lewis stars as the resigned patriarch of two slippery sons in this revival of Lonne Elder III’s drama from 1969.When it premiered Off Broadway in 1969, “Ceremonies in Dark Old Men” won Lonne Elder III a Drama Desk Award for “most promising playwright.” Today, though, it’s seldom staged or acknowledged. Taking place at a Harlem barbershop in the 1950s, it tracks the way a Black family is undone by scheming ambition and complacency.A new production at Theater at St. Clement’s, starring an excellent Norm Lewis as its flailing patriarch, makes a case not just for its revival but for a re-examination. As with the best of these observant midcentury dramas, “A Raisin in the Sun” and “Death of a Salesman” among them, “Ceremonies” has a bird’s-eye understanding of human behavior, grounded by the specificity of its setting.An old vaudevillian still grieving his long-dead wife, Russell Parker (Lewis) hangs around the deserted barbershop his daughter, Adele, pays to keep. Not attempting to earn clients, he kills time playing checkers with a friendly neighbor (James Foster Jr.) and spinning tales to his unemployed sons, the would-be hustler Theopolis (Bryce Michael Wood) and the sticky-fingered Bobby (Jeremiah Packer).But Adele (Morgan Siobhan Green) has had it. She’d cut her dreams of college short to help support the family, and seven years later, none of them have made anything of themselves. In a week’s time, she plans to sell the shop and change the locks on the adjoining house where they all live. (Harry Feiner’s set fills the bones of its skeletal, two-level structure with homey period touches.)Green fills out her short appearances imperiously. You’re scared she’ll catch the men as they hatch a plan to sell bootleg whiskey out of the shop with help from the shady Blue (Calvin M. Thompson). His phony “Harlem Decolonization Association” is a shameless front for a tentacled racket, which includes looting neighborhood businesses.Elder’s play brims with poignant gestures at the Parkers’ world, capturing a Harlem in the midst of the promise of civil rights, and of those in its community caught in the crosshairs of honest work and easy exploitation. His characters feel real and their relationships insightful, though under Clinton Turner Davis’s direction, some laugh lines seem purposely underplayed, as if leaning into the play’s comedy would undermine its eventual tragedy. But Elder’s sharp humor still peeks through his clever plotting, especially in the brothers’ banter.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ewan McGregor, Back Onstage, Is the Architect of His Own Folly

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      “My Master Builder,” a new take on the Ibsen classic, reduces a complex play to a tawdry marital melodrama.When a big star appears in a conspicuously undercooked show, what rankles is the apparent cynicism — the conceited presumption that the sheer aura of an individual talent will compensate for any shortcomings. That concern rears its head once again in a new take on Henrik Ibsen’s “The Master Builder” which opened on Tuesday in London, featuring the Scottish A-lister Ewan McGregor in the title role. In this instance, it’s apt: Artistic hubris is a central theme of Ibsen’s 1892 play, in which an aging architect, worried that his powers are waning, loses his head over an infatuated young woman.This version, called “My Master Builder,” is written by the New York-based playwright Lila Raicek and directed by Michael Grandage; it runs at Wyndham’s Theater through July 12. Raicek’s interpretation sets out to center Ibsen’s female characters, retelling the story through the lens of #MeToo — but it ends up reducing a complex play to a tawdry marital melodrama.We’re in the Hamptons, in an elegant dining room backing on to a seaside landscape, with crickets chirruping throughout. (The set is by Richard Kent.) McGregor plays Solness, a celebrated “starchitect” whose moribund marriage to the publisher Elena (Kate Fleetwood, cracklingly erratic) is set to implode as they prepare to host a party celebrating his latest opus: A dazzlingly futuristic church, built in memory of their only son, who died in an accident many years ago.McGregor plays an architect who had an affair with a former student, played by Elizabeth Debicki.Johan PerssonAmong the guests is Mathilde (Elizabeth Debicki, ambiguously winsome), with whom Solness had an adulterous fling 10 years earlier, when she was a 20-year-old student of his. Back then, Elena, despite being an avowed feminist, had responded to the revelation of the affair by trying to destroy Mathilde’s reputation. Mathilde has since written a novel about the dalliance, and Elena — who is about to file for divorce — offers to publish it out of spite.This sordid story is thrashed out over two emotionally charged hours, in a register that toggles uneasily between soapy cliché and cynical sass. (There are several quips about the phallic symbolism of tall buildings.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      “All the World’s a Stage” and “Rheology” Are Promising New Productions

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      Two worlds of promise: “All the World’s a Stage,” a musical by Adam Gwon, and “Rheology,” Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s follow-up to “Public Obscenities.”Adam Gwon’s new musical, “All the World’s a Stage,” is an unassuming, 100-minute marvel that follows a closeted math teacher at a rural high school in the 1990s. Like some of that decade’s gay-themed indie movies, including the earnest “Edge of Seventeen” and “Trick,” this musical is not looking to reinvent the wheel with its storytelling, but is charming, specific and appealing in its rendering of gay life outside the mainstream.Ricky (Matt Rodin), a 30-something teacher with a new job, befriends a kind secretary, Dede (Elizabeth Stanley), and meets Sam (Eliza Pagelle), a rebellious student in whom he finds a kindred love of theater and simmering need to break free from societal expectations. They bond over “Angels in America,” the new risqué play and the source of her monologue for an acting scholarship audition. But her selection threatens the school administration’s conservative sensibilities.At the same time, Ricky is striking up a romance with Michael (Jon-Michael Reese), the owner of a gay-friendly bookstore in a slightly more progressive town where he’s settled down. When Ricky’s two worlds inevitably collide, they do so with well-crafted wit.Gwon’s yearning, pop-classical score flows together beautifully, yet is composed of numbers distinct enough to allow the four excellent cast members to flex their skills. That balance between individuality and unity proves a key theme, expressed in the title’s idea that each of us is always adapting our performance across circumstances. (He also has fun with some clever lyrics, at one point setting up “hara-kiri” to seemingly rhyme with “Shakespearean.”)The director Jonathan Silverstein draws warm portrayals from his troupe (matched by a quartet playing onstage) in his modest, efficiently staged Keen Company production at Theater Row.Jennifer Paar’s costumes are instantly evocative; button-up shirts and wire-frame glasses for the teacher and bomber jackets for his pupil. Patrick McCollum’s movement work is gently expressive and Steven Kemp’s scenic design is similarly to-the-point, with a bookcase or chalkboard rolled in as needed, a lone student desk and an American flag hanging ominously in the corner.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Who Should Be a Tony Awards Nominee in 2025?

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      Our chief theater critic makes his picks.Clockwise from top left: “Oh, Mary!”; “Maybe Happy Ending”; “Yellow Face”; and “Gypsy.”Sara Krulwich/The New York Times; top right: Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesThough the official Tony Awards nominations aren’t scheduled to be announced until Thursday, I give you my unofficial ones right now. If it were up to me, these would be the nominees.They include some, marked with an asterisk, that because they were seen Off Broadway or were otherwise ineligible, the real Tonys won’t include. Call it theatrical license that I do so anyway. Also bucking the rule book is my Best Ensemble category, which I argue for every year even though choosing among the Broadway riches is all but impossible.Best Play“Cult of Love”“English”“The Hills of California”“John Proctor Is the Villain”“Oh, Mary!”Best Musical“Dead Outlaw”“Death Becomes Her”“Maybe Happy Ending”“Smash”“Swept Away”Best Play RevivalAndrew Scott in “Vanya.”Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Eureka Day”“Our Town”“Vanya”*“Yellow Face”Best Musical RevivalCats: The Jellicle Ball*“Floyd Collins”“Gypsy”“Once Upon a Mattress”Best Actor in a PlayCole Escola, “Oh, Mary!”Jake Gyllenhaal, “Othello”Louis McCartney, “Stranger Things: The First Shadow”Jim Parsons, “Our Town”Andrew Scott, “Vanya”*Best Actress in a PlayLaura Donnelly in “The Hills of California.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesLaura Donnelly, “The Hills of California”Susannah Flood, “Liberation”*Deirdre O’Connell, “Glass. Kill. What If If Only. Imp.”*Lily Rabe, “Ghosts”*Sarah Snook, “The Picture of Dorian Gray”Best Actor in a MusicalDarren Criss, “Maybe Happy Ending”John Gallagher Jr., “Swept Away”Jonathan Groff, “Just in Time”Joshua Henry, “Ragtime”*Jeremy Jordan, “Floyd Collins”Best Actress in a MusicalJasmine Amy Rogers, center, in “Boop! The Musical.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMegan Hilty, “Death Becomes Her”Audra McDonald, “Gypsy”Jasmine Amy Rogers, “Boop! The Musical”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More