Aronson, Will (Composer)

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    Tonys 2025 Predictions: Who Will Win? And Who Should?

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    Our chief theater critic looks at this year’s nominees and weighs in on the plays, musicals and artists he thinks will — and should — take home trophies on June 8.Tony voters do not have it easy. As the quality of (some) shows on Broadway improves, so does the difficulty and futility of ranking them. Yet not fully futile, at least for me in my fictional Tonys: A long look back at the 2024-25 season, during which I saw all 42 eligible Broadway productions, offered a chance to recall, reorganize and enjoy in memory the work of thousands of very talented artists.Thus, below, my take on the likely winners (marked with a ✓) and my personal “shouldas” (marked with a ★) in 17 of the 26 competitive categories. I hope your own Tonys, no doubt different from mine, prove as rewarding.Best PlayCole Escola, left, and James Scully in “Oh, Mary!”Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“English”“The Hills of California”“John Proctor Is the Villain”✓ ★ “Oh, Mary!”“Purpose”It’s a strong season when five new plays (with options to spare) all deserve their nominations — and one of them, “Purpose,” won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for drama, while another, “English,” won in 2023. But though both, like the other nominees, are startling in some way, Cole Escola’s “Oh, Mary!,” in which Mary Todd Lincoln’s dreams of becoming a cabaret star are nearly foiled by her very Gaybraham husband, is almost freakishly so, barely containing its demented story in the very disciplined frame of a super-tight production. As good as the other nominees are, this comedy trumps them by ripping open the notion of what camp — and Broadway — can be.Best MusicalDarren Criss and Helen J Shen in “Maybe Happy Ending.”Jeenah Moon for The New York Times“Buena Vista Social Club”“Dead Outlaw”✓ “Death Becomes Her”★ “Maybe Happy Ending”“Operation Mincemeat”Despite its brand-extension birth, “Death Becomes Her” is a classic Broadway musical in at least this sense: It brings home the laughs. That’s no mean feat, but my vote usually goes to shows that advance Broadway instead of compromising with it. In their intimacy, their delicacy, their seriousness and faith in themselves, “Maybe Happy Ending” and “Dead Outlaw” both do that. For me, “Maybe Happy Ending,” by Will Aronson and Hue Park, has the slight edge because, on top of all that, it’s shattering (in the quietest way possible).Best Play RevivalFrom left, Amber Gray, Bill Irwin, Chelsea Yakura-Kurtz and Jessica Hecht in “Eureka Day.”Sara Krulwich/The New York Times★ “Eureka Day”“Romeo + Juliet”“Our Town”✓ “Yellow Face”In this season’s death match between “Our Town,” the quintessential American drama, and “Romeo + Juliet,” the everlasting English tragedy, the Thornton Wilder revival won by a knockout. (Nobody really seemed to die in the Shakespeare.) But “Yellow Face,” by David Henry Hwang, complicating its story about colorblind casting with piquant ironies, will likely defeat them both. Still, I’d go for Jonathan Spector’s “Eureka Day,” a satire of vaccination politics that skewers both sides: anti-science know-nothings and trip-on-your-tongue progressives. It lets every kind of American cringe.Best Musical RevivalFrom left, Charlie Franklin, Jeremy Davis and Dwayne Cooper in “Floyd Collins.”Richard Termine for The New York Times★ “Floyd Collins”“Gypsy”“Pirates! The Penzance Musical”✓ “Sunset Boulevard”So sue me, I disliked “Sunset Boulevard,” which did everything in its considerable power to bury the property’s many shortcomings. That doesn’t seem to me to be a worthy goal in reviving a show. But you know what is? Getting to see our era’s biggest musical theater star (Audra McDonald) play one of the canon’s greatest roles (Rose in “Gypsy”). And though I’m loath to vote against a stage mother and a gaggle of strippers, for me, “Floyd Collins,” by Adam Guettel and Tina Landau, is the necessary revelation. It’s like “Our Town” in a cave: cosmic, brutal. (Since I worked with Guettel’s mother, Mary Rodgers, on her memoirs, I refrained from reviewing the show, but I do think it should win.)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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      ‘Maybe Happy Ending’ Review: Darren Criss and Helen J Shen Are Robots in Love

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      A supersmart musical about making a connection arrives on Broadway in a joyful, heartbreaking, cutting-edge production.Claire is low on energy, so she pops across the hall to Oliver’s pad for a pick-me-up. But Oliver, a creature of routine, doesn’t like being interrupted while listening to jazz and waiting for mail. She insists, he gives in, and a spark, maybe a literal one, is ignited.Never was a meet cute as cute — and as quietly ominous — as it is in the musical “Maybe Happy Ending,” which opened Tuesday at the Belasco Theater. That’s because the pair are robots, and Claire’s battery is running down fast. Hooking her up to his charger may signal, for Oliver, the beginning of love. It may also signal the end of it.That we nonrobots also connect, pair and empower one another to share a too-brief lifetime is the surprising double vision that makes “Maybe Happy Ending” a ravishing addition to the catalog of Broadway nerdicals. The term is high praise, honoring supersmart, usually small-scale shows — like “Fun Home,” “The Band’s Visit” and “Kimberly Akimbo” — that nevertheless have big emotional impact. This one, directed with breathtaking bravura by Michael Arden, gets bonus points for difficulty, too: Under cover of sci-fi whimsy, it sneaks in a totally original human heartbreaker.The sci-fi elements are handled lightly and humorously in the book by Hue Park and Will Aronson, thus dodging the invidious scrutiny that the genre often elicits. By 2064, when their story takes place, Helperbots — android servants like embodied Siris — have been assisting humans with daily tasks for decades. But Oliver (Darren Criss) and Claire (Helen J Shen) are now obsolete, living out their days in a pleasant retirement home in Seoul as their operating systems antiquate and replacement parts become scarce.Still, they remain fully sentient and distinct. Oliver, an early model Helperbot 3, is more stylized and herky-jerky than Claire, a later model Helperbot 5. His lips are pursed, his feet splayed, his language not quite natural (he can’t stop saying “thank you”) and his hair a hard helmet like a Playmobil figurine’s. Even so, he spent enough years with his former owner, James Choi, to have absorbed some human analog tastes — the jazz LPs especially — and to miss him fiercely. Surely Choi (Marcus Choi, excellent) will reclaim him one day.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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      Broadway’s ‘Maybe Happy Ending’ Asks: Can Robots Fall in Love?

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      “Maybe Happy Ending” had an initial Korean-language production in Seoul in 2016. Here are five things to know about the show.Hue Park was sitting in a Brooklyn coffee shop in the spring of 2014 when “Everyday Robots,” an indie pop ballad by Damon Albarn, floated over the speakers: “We are everyday robots on our phones / In the process of getting home.”What if, Park thought, there were a whole world filled with robots who looked just look humans?The result: a one-act Korean-language musical about a pair of abandoned robots who fall in love in Seoul in 2064. The show, which Park wrote with Will Aronson, a former New York University classmate, found success with its premiere in Seoul in 2016, and five subsequent commercial productions there.The New York Times critic Jesse Green, who saw an English-language production at Atlanta’s Alliance Theater in 2020, called it “charming” and “Broadway-ready.” Now that version will open at Broadway’s Belasco Theater on Nov. 12, starring Darren Criss and Helen J Shen.The story is about two outcast helperbots who meet at a robot retirement home and build a relationship while grappling with their own obsolescence, and Park thinks it is especially relatable after the coronavirus pandemic. “People have become so comfortable staying alone in their rooms and connecting to each other through a screen,” he said in a recent interview in Midtown Manhattan.Shortly after previews began last month, Park, 41, a former K-pop lyricist who wrote the show’s lyrics, and Aronson, 43, who wrote the music — both collaborated on the book — talked about their inspirations and the different approaches to developing the show’s Korean and English versions. In a separate video call, Criss, 37, and Shen, 24, discussed the challenges of playing robots who look like humans.Here are five things to know.Shen and Criss star alongside two other actors in the musical, which is at the Belasco Theater in Manhattan.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesWe 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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      Darren Criss to Return to Broadway as a Robot in Love

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      The actor will star in “Maybe Happy Ending,” an original musical set in a future Seoul. It will begin previews in September.Darren Criss, who parlayed a breakout role on “Glee” into a multifaceted career in television, theater and music, will return to Broadway this fall in a new musical that is nominally about robots but is also about life, love and loss.The show, “Maybe Happy Ending,” is a rarity for Broadway: a fully original musical — not adapted from a pre-existing story or song catalog. Criss will star alongside Helen J Shen and two other actors in the musical, which is set in Seoul in the late 21st century and is about two outmoded helperbots who meet at a robot retirement home and forge a relationship while grappling with their own obsolescence.The musical, by Will Aronson and Hue Park, had an initial Korean-language production in Seoul in 2016, and an English-language production in Atlanta, at the Alliance Theater, in 2020, where Jesse Green, a New York Times chief theater critic, called it “a charming, Broadway-ready new musical about robots in love.”The Broadway production, announced Tuesday, will be directed by Michael Arden, who also directed the Atlanta production, and who last year won a Tony Award for directing a revival of “Parade.” “Maybe Happy Ending” is scheduled to begin previews Sept. 18 and to open Oct. 17 at the Belasco Theater.“It’s a strange, futuristic look at love, with a beautiful score that feels quite classic,” Arden said in a telephone interview. “When I first read it I found it absolutely devastating and heartbreaking and beautiful — it was one of the most human stories I’d come across, even though our leads aren’t human.”Criss, an Emmy winner for “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story,” last appeared on Broadway in a 2022 revival of “American Buffalo”; he had previously starred in “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” and “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.”“Maybe Happy Ending” will be the first Broadway show for Shen, who is currently in “The Lonely Few” at Off Broadway’s MCC Theater. Criss and Shen will play the robots; the cast will also include Dez Duron, a onetime contestant on “The Voice.”“Maybe Happy Ending” is being capitalized for $18.25 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.The musical’s lead producers are Jeffrey Richards and Hunter Arnold, who on Friday announced that they are also among the producers of a new Off Broadway play, “N/A,” starring Holland Taylor and Ana Villafañe. That play, written by Mario Correa and directed by Diane Paulus, is to begin previews June 11 and to open June 23 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater. The play, described in a news release as inspired by real people and events, is about tensions between the first female speaker of the House and the youngest woman elected to Congress; the characters have parallels to Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. More