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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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      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

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      Where Can I Find a Cheap Broadway Ticket?

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      If you are determined to see a celebrity in a popular show on a busy night, you may be out of luck, but with flexibility and persistence, you can cut some costs.Illustration by Melanie LambrickDo you have a question for our culture writers and editors? Ask us here.How in the world do people score cheap Broadway tickets? The TKTS booths do not seem cheaper; one time I did rush at the box office and it was the same price as full price. Other than lottery, what do people know that I don’t know?First, a reality check: Yes, it’s true that many seats at this season’s “Othello,” starring Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal, are priced at $921. But it’s also true that that show is an outlier — the average ticket price on Broadway this season has been $129, and about one-quarter of the 40 shows now running on Broadway have an average ticket price below $100.That said, ticket prices are indeed higher than they once were, and a subject of concern for the industry, widely acknowledged and little addressed.I can’t tell you that I know of some secret strategy for getting a steal, but with a combination of flexibility, persistence and luck, you can reduce your cost.Start at the sourceYour first stop should be the official website for the show you want to see. Click on the button that says “tickets,” and that will take you to the show’s official ticketing provider. Buying that way should help you reduce fees and avoid both scalpers and scams. The fee savings can be considerable; last I looked, the same prime seat at a Saturday matinee for “The Great Gatsby” was priced at $248 via the show’s website, but $313 at broadway.com, a site that says it caters to premium ticket buyers.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 Debacles Live On at Joe Allen’s ‘Flop Wall’

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      The posters in the theater-district restaurant document the shows that went wrong.Good morning. It’s Monday. Today we’ll look at a wall of posters in a Manhattan restaurant that spotlights failed Broadway shows. We’ll also get details on a state senator who wants to take away Tesla’s right to operate five dealerships in New York.Graham Dickie/The New York TimesThere’s a place where Broadway flops live on: a wall at the restaurant Joe Allen in the theater district that is lined with posters of duds and disasters. “Everyone remembers the hits,” Joe Allen’s website says, “but we revel in the flops.” My colleague Sarah Bahr, who revels in both, writes about what it takes to make the flop wall:Donald Margulies, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of the 2000 drama “Dinner With Friends,” has a spot on the wall.But it’s not that play that earned him that place.It’s a show almost no one has heard of, a comedy called “What’s Wrong With This Picture?” that starred Faith Prince. It opened on Broadway on Dec. 8, 1994, and ran for just 12 performances.A poster for that production is one of the more than 50 posters for little-known Broadway shows featured on what is known as the “flop wall,” the brick wall opposite the bar at Joe Allen. Among them are “Doctor Zhivago,” which ran for 23 performances a decade ago, and “Moose Murders,” which closed the same night it opened in 1983.“Sometimes having a life in the theater is electrifying, and sometimes it is electrocuting,” Margulies said after a rehearsal for his latest play, “Lunar Eclipse,” which is set to begin performances Off Broadway next month.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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      ‘Real Women Have Curves’ Review: This American (Immigrant) Life

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      On Broadway, the musical adaptation is a bouncy crowd pleaser about female empowerment, self-acceptance and chasing one’s dreams.A brief scene in the new musical “Real Women Have Curves” is as harrowing as anything in the most serious drama on Broadway: a group of terrified workers in a small Los Angeles dress factory, hiding in the dark as they listen to an immigration raid taking place next door.When the raid is over, the first sounds to break the quiet are soft weeping and breath laden with fear.It’s a jolt of somber realism in a show that opts, ultimately, to lean in a feel-good direction. Yet such is the balancing act of “Real Women Have Curves,” which opened on Sunday night at the James Earl Jones Theater.Based on Josefina López’s play of the same name, and on the 2002 HBO film adaptation starring America Ferrera, it is a bouncy, crowd-pleasing comedy about female empowerment, self-acceptance and chasing one’s ambitions. It is also a tale of immigrant life in this country, and the dread woven into the fabric of daily existence for undocumented people and those closest to them.At 18, newly graduated from high school, Ana García (Tatianna Córdoba) is the only American citizen in her family, and the only one with legal status. An aspiring journalist, and the daughter of immigrants who came to California from Mexico, she is spending the summer of 1987 doing an unpaid internship at a neighborhood newspaper.Then the dress factory owned by her older sister, Estela (Florencia Cuenca), receives a huge order that needs to be turned around fast. Their fireball of a mother, Carmen (Justina Machado), ropes Ana in to work there, too.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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      ‘Dead Outlaw’ Review: This Bandit Has Mummy Issues

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      A truly twisted yarn about a long-lived corpse makes a surprisingly feel-good Broadway musical.Out on the plains, around a campfire, the violent drifter sings a beautiful song. “The sky is black but filled with diamonds / You can almost hold them in your hands” goes the yearning lyric, with a fingerpicked accompaniment and twangs from a lap steel guitar.But listen a little longer. “Up there God is preaching,” the man continues, bitterly. “Laughing while you’re reaching.” And then this amateur Nietzsche, wondering why he should care about a universe that evidently does not care about him, jumps up with his gun to go rob a train.That’s the gorgeously perverse opening of “Dead Outlaw,” the feel-good musical of the season, if death and deadpan feel good to you. As directed by David Cromer, in another of his daringly poker-faced stagings, the show is to Broadway what a ghost train is to an amusement park, with screams and laughs but much better music.That it should be on Broadway at all is a scream and a laugh. Developed by Audible, and performed last year at the 390-seat Minetta Lane Theater in Greenwich Village, “Dead Outlaw” was a critical darling and insider hit, the kind that seems to do best doing least. No matter how cosmic its concerns, it was deliberately small — eight performers, five musicians, one set — and deliberately niche. It was not, in other words, for all markets.Yet here it is, surprisingly intact, at the 1,048-seat Longacre Theater, where it opened on Sunday in the biggest market of all.You know what else is surprisingly intact? That singing bandit. Born Elmer McCurdy in 1880, he spends his first 30 years on earth alive, the next 65 not. The embalmer did a good job.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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      ‘Just in Time’ Review: Jonathan Groff Channels Bobby Darin

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      Groff is sensational as the ’60s “nightclub animal” in a Broadway bio-musical jukebox that doesn’t live up to its star.When Jonathan Groff says “I’m a wet man,” he means it.The admission comes near the start of “Just in Time,” the Bobby Darin bio-musical that opened on Saturday at Circle in the Square. It’s a warning to the 22 audience members seated at cabaret tables in the middle of the action that they may want to don raincoats as he sings and dances, sweating and spitting, a-splishin’ and a-splashin’.But Groff is wet in another sense too: He’s a rushing pipeline, a body and voice that seem to have evolved with the specific goal of transporting feelings from the inside to the outside. A rarity among male musical theater stars, he is thrilling not just sonically but also emotionally, all in one breath.And Darin, the self-described “nightclub animal” who bounced from bopper to crooner to quester to recluse, is a great fit for him. Not because they are alike in temperament, other than a compulsion to entertain and be embraced by an audience. Nor do they sound alike: Groff’s voice is lovelier than Darin’s, rounder and healthier. But the Broadway and Brill Building songs Darin sang, some of which he wrote, offer the scale, the snap and the bravura opportunities that are more often, now as then, a diva’s birthright, not a divo’s.In other words, Groff is sensational.“Just in Time,” directed by Alex Timbers, with a book by Warren Leight and Isaac Oliver, at first seems like it will be too. Certainly the opening is a wonderful jolt. Making the smart choice to introduce Groff as himself, not as Darin, the show immediately breaks out of the jukebox box, liberating its songs from service as literal illustrations. My dread that oldies involving the word “heart” would be shoehorned into the story line about Darin’s rheumatic fever was temporarily tamped.Michele Pawk, left, as the maternal Polly and Emily Bergl as the sisterly Nina, indulging and fretting over the young Darin, a sickly boy not expected to live past 16.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesInstead, “Just in Time” begins as a straight-ahead floor show in the Las Vegas style, with Groff, in a perfectly cut suit by Catherine Zuber, buzzing between song and patter while seducing the audience. The set designer Derek McLane has converted Circle’s awkward oval into a sumptuous supper club, with silver Austrian draperies covering the walls and clinking glasses of booze at the cabaret tables. A bandstand at one end of the playing space, and banquettes surrounding a mini-stage at the other, suggest a blank showbiz canvas, with flashy gold-and-indigo lighting by Justin Townsend to color it in. Darin, it seems, will be merely a pretext.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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      ‘Real Women Have Curves’ Is Now a Broadway Show. Here Are 5 Things to Know.

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      The new musical is based on Josefina López’s original play and the 2002 film adaptation that starred America Ferrera.Joy Huerta wasn’t so sure about musical theater.When the director and choreographer Sergio Trujillo approached Huerta in 2019 about adapting Josefina López’s play “Real Women Have Curves” into a musical, she had her doubts.Huerta, best known as half of the brother-and-sister pop duo Jesse & Joy, was unfamiliar with the 1990 play, and she had never seen the popular 2002 film adaptation starring America Ferrera. But then she began reading the script. And it was then, she said, that she understood why the story could be so compelling set to song.“I remember being so excited about it, because I was like, ‘Anyone can relate to this,’” said Huerta, 38, who composed the music and wrote the lyrics with Benjamin Velez, 37, for the show, which is now a Broadway musical scheduled to open on Sunday.Set in 1987 in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, “Real Women Have Curves” explores immigrant experiences through the story of a group of Latina women working at a garment factory. The focus is on an 18-year-old who is torn between staying home to help her undocumented family members and relocating to New York to attend Columbia University on a scholarship. The production had an earlier run in 2023 at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass.Shortly after performances began on Broadway this month, Huerta, Velez and Lisa Loomer, who wrote the book with Nell Benjamin, discussed their inspirations and approach to adapting the story for the stage. In a separate conversation, Tatianna Córdoba, 25, who stars as the musical’s young heroine, Ana García, spoke about making her Broadway debut in a role she identifies with so closely. Here are five things to know about the production.“Real Women Have Curves” is at the James Earl Jones Theater in Manhattan.Sara Krulwich/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