The 2025-2026 Broadway season — the highest-grossing in history at $1.9 billion, even though it included only six new musicals, which typically drive ticket sales — ended Sunday night with the 79th Tony Awards at Radio City Music Hall in New York. Rule of 831 voters? 10 performances that deserved recognition in at least one category: Becky, what?, Cats: Jellicle Ball, Death of a salesman, giant, Fallen angels, release, Lost Boys, Oedipus, Ragtime music and Shmegadon!.
Best Musical is the Tony film that tends to generate a significant box office boost for its winner Shmegadon!the casting of Broadway musicals backed by Lorne Michaels has ended Lost Boysa show that appealed to the younger demo. It was a battle of screen adjustments – Shmegadon! Inspired by the Apple TV series of the same name, while Lost Boys is a musical spin on the 1987 film of the same name — which has co-starred with the most Tony credits of any show this season, 12.
In what was seen as a similarly close contest, Lincoln Center produced the Ragtime musicits first on Broadway since the show first ran from 1998 to 2000, and won Best Revival of a Musical. Cats: Jellicle Balla thrilling reimagining of the polarizing show that ran on the Great White Way from 1982 until 2000.
The remaining musical awards, which count new productions and revivals side by side, were distributed fairly evenly among the four shows mentioned above. The best direction went for Cats (specifically to the team of Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch), and also won for Best Choreography and Costume Design (making Queen Jane the first transgender person to win a Tony Award). It went for Best Actor and Actress Ragtime musicJoshua Henry and Casey Levy, respectively, and the show was also honored for Best Sound Design. Lost Boys Best Featured Actor and Featured Actress awards, respectively, went to 26-year-old Ali Louis Borzge, who upset Cats’ Andre De Shields, and ensemble veteran Shoshanna Bean, as well as lighting design for a musical and scenic design for a musical. (The legendary De Shields, 80, won an award seven years ago Hadestown.) and Shmegadon! It also won Best Book, Original Score and Arrangements. (Its wins made Apple TV EGOT’s fastest streaming device, just six and a half years after launch.)
releaseIt’s a commemorative play about 1970s feminism, which debuted on Broadway and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama last month, and was selected for a Best Play Tony Award. gianta disturbing portrait of children’s author Roald Dahl at the moment he first faced accusations of anti-Semitism – this despite the fact that the former closed its doors in February, while the latter is still running and a huge success at the box office, having recouped its $5.6 million gross in just 10 weeks.
Rather noticeably, release Writer Bess Wall became the first American playwright in 38 years to win the Tony Award for Best Play, succeeding the late Wendy Wasserstein, who won the award for Heidi Records. Oddly enough, this high honor was the only win that night releasewhile giant It received its only award for its lead actor, John Lithgow, marking his third Tony win, 53 years after his first.
However, most of the theatrical awards went to the internationally acclaimed production of Arthur Miller’s “The Great American Play.” Death of a salesman. Its sixth Broadway rerun since the 1949 original was recognized with an award for Best Revival and Direction (Joe Mantello’s third Tony for direction, after the play Get me out In 2003 the musical Assassins In 2004), Featured Actress (Laurie Metcalfe’s third win, all in the past decade, after A Doll’s House, Part 2 In 2017 and Three tall women In 2018), lighting design, scenic design and sound design. In fact, no show of any kind has been recognized with more Tony Awards this year than six Death of a salesman.
Sadly, the show’s heartbreaking Willy Loman, Nathan Lane, was stopped short of a fourth Tony win by Lithgow, in what was probably the most watched race of the night; And Biff Loman, 40-year-old Christopher Abbott, was upset by his young theater colleague also known for his film work, 36-year-old Alden Ehrenreich. Becky, what?a revival of the black comedy in which Ehrenreich portrays a truly toxic man.
Ehrenreich’s win was the only win for Becky, what?. The other two shows this year that won once were Oedipusfor which Lesley Manville won Best Actress in a Play in recognition of her Broadway debut at the age of 70 (the show closed in February); and Fallen angelsthe first Broadway revival in 70 years of Noel Coward’s lesser-known comedy (it closed earlier Sunday), which won Best Costume Design for a Play.
Meanwhile, 14 Tony Award-nominated shows went home completely empty-handed: Two strangers (carrying a cake across New York), Balustrades, Little Bear Ridge Road, Titanic, The Rocky Horror Show by Richard O’Brien, Everything is great, Punch, insect, Chess, Marjorie Prime, Waiting for Godot, Joe Turner come and go, Afternoon dog day and Fear 13.
Fun fact: Three of the six Tony-nominated artists who appeared this year THR The Tonys Roundtable — Bean, Henry and Lithgow — took home the hardware.
