Tony Awards 2024: Who Will Win (and Who Should)

Tony Awards 2024: Who Will Win (and Who Should)


The 2023-24 Broadway season was rich with new plays and, let’s say, crowded with new musicals. Revivals were rarer — not a bad thing, necessarily. But the combination of factors makes for quite a horse race as the Tony Awards presentation approaches. So take my annual Tonys “ballot” with the usual caveats, listed below, and with a grain of salt for my highly unscientific commentary within each category. As always, that includes a plea for the addition of new awards; if we can change, why can’t the Tonys?

1. I’m not an oddsmaker. I don’t actually vote. Prizes for artistic merit are silly. You could probably do better by flipping a coin.

2. The people and productions listed in the “Should Win” category are not necessarily more deserving than those in “Will Win.” There’s often little if any excellence gap between the two groups.

3. The “Should Have Been Nominated” category obviously includes Broadway work that was eligible but spurned. Less obviously, it also includes work from Off Broadway and beyond (indicated by an *asterisk*) that’s totally ineligible for the Tonys, just because.

Table of Contents

WILL WIN

Should win

Should have been nominated

Four cheers for Off Broadway, where so many Broadway plays start — including this year’s “Stereophonic, “Mary Jane,” “Appropriate” and “Prayer for the French Republic.” And a fifth cheer for “Primary Trust,” which won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.


WILL WIN

Should win

Should have been nominated

Is the all-dance, no-dialogue “Illinoise” even a musical? (For that matter, is “Stereophonic,” with its great songs, a play?) No matter, as long as they both get a prize.


WILL WIN

Should win

Should have been nominated

Best play revival is a slim category, with just three nominees, all excellent. But “Purlie” was more than a revival: It was a reclamation. That’s also why, for the second year in a row, I’m putting Alice Childress’s 1962 play on my list — this time for a production at the Stratford Festival in Ontario. It can take multiple revivals to ensure survival.


WILL WIN

Should win

Should have been nominated

Jelly’s Last Jam” was mind-blowing. “Once Upon a Mattress” was a joy. “Titanic” is yet to come but even if it sinks, this was the best Encores! season in years.


WILL WIN

Should win

Should have been nominated

Harper is an actual best actor nominee for his fine Broadway turn as Astrov in “Uncle Vanya.” But his Off Broadway performance in “Primary Trust” was the most moving I saw all season …


WILL WIN

Should win

Should have been nominated

… unless the most moving performance I saw all season was Beans’s in “Jonah.”


WILL WIN

Should win

Should have been nominated

Jukebox musicals are not usually my thing, but I have to make an exception for Cott in “The Heart of Rock and Roll.” A leading man who leaves it all on the floor, whatever the floor is, demands attention.


WILL WIN

Should win

Should have been nominated

It is hard to believe that Maleah Joi Moon wasn’t trained from birth for her wow of a debut in Alicia Keys’s autobiographical musical.


WILL WIN

Should win

Should have been nominated

I give Tom Pecinka the “should win,” but all of his “Stereophonic” castmates are deserving, being almost one organism. This is why we need a best ensemble award. See below!


WILL WIN

SHOULD WIN

SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED

Kara Young is nominated for the third year in a row, each role notably different from the last. This one was a comic triumph.


WILL WIN

Should win

Should have been nominated

Why Sky Lakota-Lynch? Check out his performance of the show’s heart-wrenching 11 o’clock number, “Stay Gold.”


WILL WIN

Should win

Should have been nominated

I would like to attend a belt-off between Shoshana Bean and Kecia Lewis.


WILL WIN

Should win

Should have been nominated

Of the 10 nominees in the directing categories, seven are women. That’s quite a breakthrough; last year there were three.


WILL WIN

Should win

Should have been nominated

Danya Taymor and Jessica Stone leaned hard into the often underused opportunities of visual storytelling. More of this please!


WILL WIN

Should win

Should have been nominated

The hardest category to predict because it’s the hardest job to ace. Also the least rewarding. The better it’s done, the less it’s noticed.


WILL WIN

Should win

Should have been nominated

You may argue that Sondheim wrote only half a score. That’s still a 10 in my book.


WILL WIN

Should win

Should have been nominated

In addition to creating the choreography with Robb, Carroll staged the beautiful and marvelously integrated circus sequences in “Water for Elephants.”


Should win

Other new categories I’d like to see: Best Song. Most Imaginative Animals. Most Convincing Projections. Biggest Wigs. Least Sound.



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