Tony Awards (Theater Awards)

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      Best and Worst Moments From the 2025 Tony Awards

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      There was a “Hamilton” reunion, Nicole Scherzinger’s outsize grandeur and Cynthia Erivo’s pleasant “sing-off” music. But those cheesy projections were a big miss.Best Reunion: The ‘Hamilton’ CastIt was plugged before what seemed like every commercial break, but when members of the original cast of “Hamilton” finally gathered onstage at Radio City Music Hall for a 10th-anniversary reunion performance, the hype proved justified. Sleekly lit and dressed and choreographed, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Leslie Odom Jr. were gloriously back; so were Phillipa Soo, Renée Elise Goldsberry and Jasmine Cephas Jones and that Tony-nominated guy who played King George. The eight-song medley — which included “My Shot,” “The Schuyler Sisters” and “The Room Where It Happens”— snapped. I’d make room for it on any list of all-time-best Tonys performances.— Scott HellerBest Inspiration: Here’s to You, Mr. RobinsonGary Edwin Robinson, the head of the theater arts program at Boys and Girls High School in Brooklyn, accepting his special Tony Honor.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe smooth baritone, the sly half-smile and the wink at the camera. This guy had to be an actor. And, once upon a time, he was. But Gary Edwin Robinson received a Tony Award last night for his second career, as a teacher, at Boys and Girls High School in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Accepting the honor in that voice that could make you believe anything, he said that he trained his students not merely to appreciate theater, but to find careers in it. Appreciation is of course valuable, but the harder thing is to instill in young people the idea that finding “the theater in themselves” can be honorable, and even necessary.— Jesse GreenBest Epic Acceptance: Nicole ScherzingerAn outsize grandeur animated Nicole Scherzinger’s acceptance speech.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesNicole Scherzinger’s acceptance speech was as epically demonstrative as her movements in “Sunset Boulevard” are controlled, restrained, precise. The acknowledging of “the exceptional warrior women in this category”! The shaking! The crying! The swooping motions from the hand that was not holding her new award! At times it felt like seeing a modern Maria Callas shaking her fist at the heavens, except that for once those heavens had ruled in her favor. There was an outsize grandeur to the drama of it all that felt classical. Can Medea be far off?— Elisabeth VincentelliBest Placement: Cynthia Erivo’s Balcony BitReady to mingle: The show’s host Cynthia Erivo in the balcony.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

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      Tonys 2025 Takeaways: ‘Maybe Happy Ending’ Wins 6 Awards

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      Broadway rewarded adventurous newcomers including Sarah Snook (“The Picture of Dorian Gray”), Nicole Scherzinger (“Sunset Boulevard”) and Cole Escola (“Oh, Mary!”).“Maybe Happy Ending,” a stirring Broadway musical about two discarded robots who go on a road trip and forge a relationship, won the coveted Tony for best new musical on Sunday night, capping a remarkable journey for a show that faced long odds but won over both critics and fans.The triumph of a show with a puzzling title and tough-to-explain themes was a vote of confidence in originality by an industry often dominated by big-brand intellectual property and big-name Hollywood stars.The musical’s prize capped a night in which Broadway rewarded adventurous newcomers: Sarah Snook, the “Succession” star who played 26 roles in a technologically complicated adaptation of “The Picture of Dorian Gray”; Nicole Scherzinger, the former Pussycat Doll who, barefoot and bloodied, delivered a scorching performance in a revival of “Sunset Boulevard”; and Cole Escola, an alt-cabaret performer who imagined Mary Todd Lincoln as an alcoholic who longs to be a chanteuse and turned that zany idea into the hit play “Oh, Mary!”The awards were spread out among a diverse array of shows. “Maybe Happy Ending,” set in a futuristic Korea, won a night-leading six awards, and “Buena Vista Social Club,” a musical set in Cuba, finished with four competitive prizes.Natalie Venetia Belcon performed a song from “Buena Vista Social Club” before winning a Tony for best featured actress in a musical.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe awards show took place as Broadway seems finally to be rebounding after a damaging pandemic shutdown. The season that just ended was the highest grossing on record when the figures are not adjusted for inflation. But attendance remains slightly below prepandemic levels and very few musicals are achieving profitability. The season’s success was attributable in large part to three starry plays whose runs are now ending: “Good Night, and Good Luck,” “Othello” and “Glengarry Glen Ross.”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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      Cole Escola Wins the Tony for Best Actor in a Play

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      In “Oh, Mary!,” Escola plays a drunken, melodramatic Mary Todd Lincoln who yearns to return to cabaret.Cole Escola won the Tony for best actor in a play for their performance in the outlandish, ahistoric comedy “Oh, Mary!” This is Escola’s Broadway debut, and first Tony.Escola, who is nonbinary, plays a self-indulgent, scheming Mary Todd Lincoln, who aspires to become a chanteuse. As a result, her boredom — which includes pining to perform her “madcap medleys” of yesteryear — drives her to all kinds of antics. (With Cole prancing around in a hoop skirt, hilarity ensues.)The New York Times chief theater critic, Jesse Green, called “Oh, Mary!,” which Escola also wrote, “one of the best crafted and most exactingly directed Broadway comedies in years.”Directed by Sam Pinkleton, the show opened at the Lyceum Theater last summer after a sold-out and twice-extended Off Broadway run. The play has also been extended multiple times since it transferred to Broadway. (It was the first show in the Lyceum’s 121-year history to gross more than $1 million in a single week.)Escola, known for their roles in Hulu’s “Difficult People,” TBS’s “Search Party” and sketches on YouTube, came up through New York’s cabaret and alt comedy scenes. The premise for “Oh, Mary!” began with an idea, which Escola sat on for more than 12 years: “What if Abraham Lincoln’s assassination wasn’t such a bad thing for Mary Todd?”The Tony Awards, like the Oscars, use gendered categories for performers, and Escola agreed to be considered eligible for an award as an actor. Escola isn’t the first nonbinary actor to win a Tony Award.In 2023, J. Harrison Ghee became the first out nonbinary performer to win a Tony for best leading actor in a musical, for “Some Like It Hot,” and Alex Newell became the first out nonbinary performer to win for best featured actor in a musical for “Shucked.” More

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      ‘Maybe Happy Ending’ Wins the Tony for Best Musical

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      The musical, about a budding romance between two outdated robots, won six Tony Awards on Sunday night.“Maybe Happy Ending,” an original musical that is outwardly about a budding romance between two outdated robots, but fundamentally about contemporary themes of social isolation and the transformative power of connection, won a stunning victory as best musical at the Tony Awards Sunday night.The show’s triumph defied all the odds — it has a mystifying title, a subject matter that some find off-putting, and zero brand recognition in an industry often dominated by well-known intellectual property and well-liked celebrities. But “Maybe Happy Ending” has gradually won over audiences since opening last fall, and overtook several better-known, and better-funded, titles to win the award that traditionally has the biggest financial impact on the shows that receive it.The story concerns two discarded “helperbots” — humanoid robots previously used as personal assistants — living across the hall from one another at a robot retirement home in a near-future Seoul. The helperbots, played by Darren Criss and Helen J Shen, strike up a friendship and embark on a road trip, racing against their own expiring shelf lives as they seek meaning and magic, at first from the outside world, but then from each other.The show is written by two Broadway newbies, Will Aronson, who was born in the United States, and Hue Park, who was born in South Korea; it is directed by Michael Arden, a Broadway regular who won a Tony Award in 2023 for directing “Parade.”The score has a midcentury pop and jazz sound. The cast is remarkably small for a Broadway musical, with just four onstage actors. But the production feels big, because it has an unusually elaborate and high-tech set, designed by Dane Laffrey with video design by George Reeve, that is one of the most complex and sophisticated seen on Broadway.“Maybe Happy Ending” had a long and nontraditional path to Broadway. It had productions in South Korea and Japan, as well as a prepandemic run at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta, before making its way to New York, where it opened in November to unanimously positive reviews. In The New York Times, the critic Jesse Green called it “astonishing,” writing, “Under cover of sci-fi whimsy, it sneaks in a totally original human heartbreaker.”The show began performances on Broadway last October and continues with an open-ended run at the Belasco Theater. A North American tour is scheduled to begin in Baltimore in the fall of 2026.The Broadway run is being produced by Jeffrey Richards and Hunter Arnold; it was capitalized for $16 million, and it is not yet clear whether it will recoup those capitalization costs, although the Tony will likely help. More

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      Lin-Manuel Miranda and Original ‘Hamilton’ Cast Reunited for a Tonys Medley

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      Marking the 10th anniversary of the show’s opening, the creator and cast reunited to perform “My Shot,” “The Schuyler Sisters” and other notable songs.The cast of “Hamilton” on Sunday returned to the room where it happened, at least metaphorically.To mark the 10th anniversary of the show’s opening, 28 members of the original cast — the show’s creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, along with the other stars, ensemble members, swings and standbys — gathered onstage at Radio City Music Hall and performed a medley of some of the musical’s biggest songs: “Non-Stop,” “My Shot,” “The Schuyler Sisters,” “Guns and Ships,” “You’ll Be Back,” “Yorktown,” “The Room Where It Happens” and “History Has Its Eyes on You.”They dressed not in the show’s period costumes, but in an array of high-fashion evening wear — all black with a few character-driven accents (Lafayette got a Frenchman’s beret; Burr a dueler’s cape; and King George the one splash of color: royal red).They didn’t say a word, but Cynthia Erivo, this year’s Tony Awards host and in 2016 the only musical performer to win a Tony for any show other than “Hamilton,” hailed the production.“Hamilton reinvigorated the American theater and changed not just Broadway, but how Americans views their own history,” Erivo said, before adding wryly, “or so I’m told.”“Hamilton” opened on Broadway on Aug. 6, 2015. The following spring, it was nominated for a record 16 Tony Awards, and then, in a Tonys ceremony at the Beacon Theater, it won 11 prizes, including best musical. (The event was memorable for many reasons — among them, it took place hours after the deadly Pulse nightclub shooting in Florida, which led the “Hamilton” cast to drop the use of muskets in its production number, and prompted Miranda to give his “love is love” acceptance speech.)The show quickly became the biggest phenomenon Broadway had seen in quite some time, and in the decade since, it has only gotten bigger, spinning off touring companies, streaming a live-capture film on Disney+, grossing about $3 billion in North America, and still going strong.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 Award Winners 2025: Updating List

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      The Tony Awards are underway at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.Follow the latest live updates and photos from the Tony Awards.The 78th Tony Awards are here, and it’s a close race in several categories.“Buena Vista Social Club,” “Death Becomes Her” and “Maybe Happy Ending,” all musicals, lead with 10 nominations each. “Dead Outlaw,” “John Proctor Is the Villain,” “Sunset Boulevard” and “The Hills of California” are close behind, with seven apiece.The ceremony, hosted by Cynthia Erivo, began at 8 p.m. E.T. at Radio City Music Hall and is being broadcast on CBS and available to stream on Paramount+. Several awards were announced at a preshow ceremony, hosted by Renée Elise Goldsberry and Darren Criss, who is nominated this year for best actor in a musical.Expect a night of energetic performances, including from “Gypsy,” “Operation Mincemeat,” “Sunset Boulevard” and “Buena Vista Social Club” — as well as a live number from “Hamilton.”An updating list of winners is below.Sarah Snook won a best leading actress Tony for her role in “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” in which she plays all 26 roles.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

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      Candid Photos from the Tony Awards Red Carpet

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      George Clooney, Nicole Scherzinger, Audra McDonald, Sarah Snook, Daniel Dae Kim and Cole Escola are some of the big names up for top acting prizes at Sunday night’s Tony Awards. Before the ceremony, as Broadway stars arrived at New York’s Radio City Music Hall, the photographer Sinna Nasseri captured their candid moments.Got a singing welcome from some of our media counterparts.What it feels like to be stared down by Cole Escola.The photo op spots are plentiful on the red carpet. On the left, Nicole Scherzinger poses. On the right, it’s Jonathan Groff with Gracie Lawrence. One night after his play, “Good Night, and Good Luck” was broadcast on CNN, George Clooney arrives at the Tonys.Brooke Shields lets her hair down. The star of “John Proctor Is the Villain,” Sadie Sink. Cynthia Erivo, the host of the telecast, in the first of her many outfits of the night.Anna Wintour and her daughter, Bee Carrozzini, chat in the background as Julianne Hough looks on in a white dress.LaTanya Richardson Jackson, a nominee for “Purpose,” with her husband, Samuel L. Jackson. Sarah Paulson arrives, regally.The actor Keanu Reeves will be back in New York this September, starring with his “Bill and Ted” co-star Alex Winter in “Waiting for Godot.”Danielle Brooks was a nominee in 2016 for her performance in “The Color Purple.”Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesAndrew Durand (right) of “Dead Outlaw” points and gets pointed at.The actress Fina Strazza gets some help with her dress.The rain rolled at the same time as “Sunset Boulevard” nominee Tom Francis.Mia Farrow, a nominee for her performance in “The Roommate,” brought her son, Ronan Farrow. Megan Hilty is nominated alongside her “Death Becomes Her” co-star Jennifer Simard.Jamie Lloyd, the director of “Sunset Boulevard,” stands out with his sunglasses and tattoos. Two acting nominees, Daniel Dae Kim and Danny Burstein, share a moment. The producer Jordan Roth, in a flowing gown.Justin Peck was last year’s winner for best choreography.Waiting in line is a part of every red carpet arrival.Renée Elise Goldsberry, part of the original cast of “Hamilton,” takes questions.A red sticker on a purse that has the word “talent” on it will make sure you get where you need to go. Being with Leslie Odom Jr., will also help with that.The designer Christian Siriano.There’s always time for a quick conversation during red carpet arrivals.First-time nominee Bob Odenkirk. More

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      Here’s what to expect at tonight’s ceremony.

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      The Tony Awards are Broadway’s biggest night, when the latest plays and musicals are introduced to a television audience of several million, any of whom might turn into a theater lover, a ticket buyer, or even an artist (so many Broadway performers and producers have stories about watching the Tony Awards as children). Here’s what to expect:The ceremony is being hosted by Cynthia Erivo, who won a Tony Award in 2016 for her breakout performance in a revival of “The Color Purple” and was nominated this year for an Oscar for playing Elphaba in the “Wicked” film adaptation. In the years since winning the Tony, Erivo, a 38-year-old British actress, has focused on movies, television and music — she has just released her second studio album and the second “Wicked” film comes out Nov. 21.After the Tony Awards, she’ll be returning to the stage. In August she’s playing Jesus in a one-weekend run of “Jesus Christ Superstar” at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, and then early next year she’ll star in a one-woman version of “Dracula” in London’s West End.Who will be performing?Much of the excitement is likely to focus on a 10th anniversary performance by the entire original cast of “Hamilton,” which is Broadway’s last huge hit. The number is expected to be a medley of the show’s best-known songs.All five shows nominated for best new musical will perform songs from their shows: “Buena Vista Social Club,” about a group of Cuban musicians; “Dead Outlaw,” about a bandit and his outlandish afterlife; “Death Becomes Her,” about two women whose quest for eternal youth has comical consequences; “Maybe Happy Ending,” about a relationship between two involuntarily retired robots; and “Operation Mincemeat,” about a bizarre British counterintelligence operation.The four shows nominated for best musical revival are also performing, including “Floyd Collins,” about a trapped cave explorer; “Gypsy,” about a stripper’s stage mother; “Pirates!” about a lovelorn buccaneer; and “Sunset Boulevard,” about a faded film star.There will also be performances by two other new musicals: “Just in Time,” about the singer Bobby Darin, and “Real Women Have Curves,” which explores immigrant experiences through the eyes of a young woman.Sara Bareilles will join Erivo to perform during the In Memoriam segment, and the choir Broadway Inspirational Voices will join Erivo for the opening number.Who is presenting?There will be lots of household names introducing shows and presenting awards. Among them: Oprah Winfrey, Samuel L. Jackson, Keanu Reeves, Adam Lambert, Michelle Williams, Bryan Cranston, Ben Stiller, Jean Smart, Lea Michele, Danielle Brooks, Lea Salonga and Sarah Paulson. Lin-Manuel Miranda is expected to present the award for best musical.Who will win?The most-nominated shows are the musicals “Buena Vista Social Club,” “Death Becomes Her” and “Maybe Happy Ending,” each with 10 nods. The prizes are likely to be quite spread out, but “Maybe Happy Ending,” “Sunset Boulevard” and the play “Oh, Mary!” seem certain to get some love from voters.Many celebrities performed on Broadway this season, but several of them were not nominated for Tony Awards, and others are not likely to win. One star favored to go home with a statuette: Sarah Snook, best known for HBO’s “Succession,” is expected to win a Tony Award for playing every character in a stage adaptation of “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” More