The Tony Awards: My Uninformed Predictions

The Tony Awards will air on CBS this Sunday, thanks to an agreement with the striking Writers Guild, which will let the show go on without picketing — and without any writers. I’m not sure that will be much of a handicap for a show that depends less on scripted banter than on splashy production numbers, all the better to showcase the nominated shows in what is Broadway best promotional opportunity of the year.

As for the awards themselves, I don’t presume to have any inside dope on the likely winners, but here are my best guesses and a quick guide to the top awards.

Best Musical.  In a weak season for musicals, it looks like a toss-up between two shows and two Tony traditions. Will this be one of those years when the Tonys reward a small-scale, critically lauded show (e.g., The Band’s Visit or last year’s winner, A Strange Loop)? Or give the award to a more traditional Broadway crowd-pleaser that could get a major boost (especially for future national tours) from a Tony for best musical? If the first, the winner will be Kimberly Akimbo, the quirky little show about a teenager suffering from a disease that speeds up the aging process. If the second, the winner will most likely be Some Like It Hot, the splashy musical based on the famed comedy movie, which got a season-high 13 nominations. Kimberly is probably the favorite, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Hot squeaks in. A dark horse to watch: Shucked, the cornball musical that has been a surprise hit and could pick up some significant lesser awards.

Best Play. The strange thing about this category is that the play I assumed would be a top contender — The Life of Pi,  a major award-winner in London — did not even get nominated. Instead, the Tony committee chose to recognize four home-grown, critically acclaimed (though not by me) plays that originated off-Broadway: Fat Ham, Between Riverside and Crazy, Cost of Living, and Ain’t No Mo’. But judging by early signs (including Drama Desk and New York Drama Critics Circle awards), all of them will likely lose out to Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt, which has two big things going for it: it’s an autobiographical play about the Holocaust, and it comes from a much-honored playwright nearing the end of a storied career.

Best Actor in a Play: The two best performances in this category — Corey Hawkins and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II — will probably cancel each other out, since they’re in the same play, Suzan-Lori Parks’s scalding Topdog/Underdog. That leaves the field open to three plausible contenders: Sean Hayes, for his impersonation of pianist-raconteur Oscar Levant in the dreary Good Night, Oscar; Stephen McKinley Henderson, a beloved Broadway vet, as the disgruntled ex-cop in Between Riverside and Crazy; and Wendell Pierce, Broadway’s first Black Willie Loman in the revival of Death of a Salesman. My guess: Hayes’s flashy rendition of Rhapsody in Blue (yes, he plays the piano too!) will pull him across the finish line.    

Best Actress in a Play. When I saw Jodie Comer’s commanding performance as a British barrister recalling a life-changing sexual assault in the solo drama Prima Facie, I assumed she would be a shoe-in for a Tony. So I’ve been a bit surprised that early handicappers are giving a chance to Jessica Chastain, who brings some Hollywood glamour to an arid revival of A Doll’s House, and even Audra McDonald, who has already won six Tonys and starred in a very slight Broadway offering, Adrienne Kennedy’s Ohio State Murders. The big mystery in this category, however, is how Laura Linney, so terrific in David Auburn’s two-hander, Summer, 1976, was ignored, while her not-quite-as-terrific co-star, Jessica Hecht, got a nod. No matter; she won’t be a factor in a race that is still Comer’s to lose. 

Best Actor/Actress in a Musical: If there’s one nearly sure thing, it’s that Victoria Clark, a longtime Broadway favorite, will take the best actress award for her age-shifting performance in Kimberly Akimbo. The real competition comes in the best actor category. By all rights, the award should go to Ben Platt, as the doomed victim of anti-Semitism in the excellent revival of Parade. But there will be some support for Josh Groban, who does a fine job, at least vocally, in the revival of Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd. My bet, however, is that the Tony voters will make a statement here and give the award to J. Harrison Ghee, as the cross-dressing bass player in Some Like It Hot — making him the first nonbinary actor to win a Tony. Take that, Ron DeSantis.