At the Oscars, only the Best Picture award matters significantly for box office revenue. The same is true for the Tony Awards, with its award for Best Musical. Unfortunately, the 2025-26 season's new musicals, both on and off-Broadway, have been so weak that the New York Theatre Critics Circle, of which I am a member, did not award a Best Musical award this spring.
Despite this setback, Cinco Paul's musical "Schmigadoon!" will take home the top prize at the 79th Tony Awards, as the organization's largest voting bloc—hundreds of out-of-town presenters—will choose it for Best Musical. They want to award a Tony to a show they can sell to their subscriber base in theaters from Boston to Los Angeles. Paul's parody of classic musicals—the original television version debuted on Apple TV in 2021—is the perfect show for subscribers in Middle America.
"The Lost Boys" has a chance of being a success, but the touring organizers know that a touring production can't include the show's signature feature: all those elevators that transport the actors and gigantic sets up and down the Palace Theatre stage. The biggest fear in this vampire musical is whether one of the actors will be crushed by a collapsing living room or, more likely, fall down an elevator shaft.
«"Two Strangers (Carrying Cake Across New York)" is a strong choice for Best Musical, both artistically and commercially. Unlike "Schmigadoon!" and "The Lost Boys," which have television or film histories, "Two Strangers" needs acclaim to tour, and since it's a two-act play—meaning it's inexpensive to produce—it's ideal for theaters outside the Hudson River.
Cinco Paul is also up for Best Musical Score and Best Libretto for a Musical. As a member of the Theatre Critics Circle, I vote for the Tony Awards, and my favorites are Jim Barne and Keith Buchan's score for Two Strangers and the libretto for Titanic by Marla Mindell, Konstantin Rusouli, and Ty Blue.
Bess Wohl's play Deliverance won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize, and that could be enough to secure her the Tony Award for Best Play. This highest honor hasn't been bestowed upon a female playwright since 2009, when Yasmina Rez won for God of Carnage, and the Tony Award hasn't been given to an American female playwright since 1989, when Wendy Wasserstein won for The Heidi Chronicles. The theater community will want to recognize Wohl's achievements, and, more importantly, Wohl has written the best new play of the Broadway season.
Wendy White directed "Deliverance" and deserves the award for Best Play Direction. However, the award will go to Joe Mantello for "Death of a Salesman." He has the advantage of also directing Samuel D. Hunter's "Road to Little Bear Ridge," which was nominated for Best Play.
Directors working on revivals tend to win the favor of directors of new works. It's less obvious what directors are doing with something original, like "Deliverance" or "Ridge Road," than when they're staging a tried-and-true play like "Salesman," whose set is now reduced to Willy Loman's red Chevrolet, or "Cats," whose action now takes place in a downtown ballroom where drag performers compete.
For this reason, the Tony Award for Best Directing of a Musical will go to Jalon Levingston and Bill Rauch for their colorful reworking of "Cats," now subtitled "The Jellicle Ball." Their concept, featuring a drag queen, is quite interesting—for about 15 minutes. The award should have gone to Sam Pinkleton for his hilariously creepy revival of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," but he won in 2025 for directing the comedy "Oh, Mary!" Furthermore, the Tony Awards organizers forgot to nominate him this year.
The Best Revival of a Musical category will see a fierce battle between "Cats" and "Ragtime," with "Rocky Horror" more deserving. The aforementioned out-of-town organizers may tip the scales in favor of "Ragtime," as the new version of "Cats" with its LGBTQ+ themes is a bit too much for their conservative following.
Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is likely to win the award for Best Revival, but don't be surprised if the Tony goes to Gina Gionfriddo's far superior production of Becky Shaw. Recently, Tony Awards jurors have used the awards to honor living playwrights. Although some of them have passed away, the Tony Awards preferred to honor artists who were able to accept the award in person. These included Tony Kushner (Angels in America, 2018), Mart Crowley (The Boys in the Band, 2019), Charles Fuller (A Soldier's Play, 2020-21), Richard Greenberg (Take Me Out, 2022), Suzan-Lori Parks (Best/Bad, 2023), Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Appropriate, 2024), and Jonathan Spector (Eureka Day, 2025). For the Tony Awards to choose a deceased playwright, one would have to go back to 2017: August Wilson for Jitney. Another advantage of Becky Shaw is its popular production company, Second Stage, while Salesman is led by the controversial Scott Rudin, who returned to Broadway this season after a long hiatus.
Joshua Henry ("Ragtime") will win Best Actor in a Musical. Many theatergoers and critics are praising his powerful performance. For me, he epitomizes how musical theater has become just another episode of "American Idol." When singers linger on a high note, begging for applause mid-song, not only does the music falter, but the integrity of the performance suffers. I go to musicals to hear people sing, not to hear applause.
I much prefer Sam Tutti's performance in Two Strangers. When he debuted in that play last fall, a star was born.
The five nominees for Best Actress in a Musical may be the weakest group in decades, and the Tony nominating committee is to blame. They could have chosen Kristin Chenoweth for "The Queen of Versailles" and Lea Michele for "Chess," but they missed their chance. Caissie Levy has a good chance, but I found the entire production of "Ragtime" loud, ponderous, and pretentious. A comical story is desperately needed, so I'm voting for Marla Mindell. Her impersonation of Celine Dion in "Titanic" rocked the St. James Theatre after nearly a decade of similar performances at downtown theaters.
The devoted Anglophiles on the Tony Awards jury will not miss the opportunity to honor Lesley Manville for Oedipus, a truly prestigious project. The British haven't chosen such an obvious candidate since Simon Russell Beale's win for The Lehman Trilogy four years ago. Unfortunately, the New York theater community isn't planning on awarding the prize to one of its own. My pick is Suzanne Flood for Deliverance.
John Lithgow will be named Best Actor in a Play for his role in "Giant." He's superb, but even more remarkable were Alden Ehrenreich for his role in "Becky Shaw" and Ruben Santiago-Hudson for his role in "Joe Turner Came and Gone," both of whom were nominated for Best Actor in a Feature Film despite playing the lead roles.
Ehrenreich will win Best Supporting Actress in a Play, and she deserves it, as does Santiago-Hudson. Two superb performances.
Sentimentality will prevail when choosing the winners for Best Supporting Actor in a Musical and Best Supporting Actress in a Play. These awards will go to 80-year-old Andre De Shields for Cats and 96-year-old June Squibb for Marjorie Prime, respectively. The brilliance of their two long and illustrious careers cannot be denied. However, the awards should go to Leighton Williams for Titanic and Betsy Aidem for Deliverance, who delivered one of the season's finest performances in a duet.
Rachel Dratch deserves a win in "The Rocky Horror Show" for her witty cross-dressing performance as the narrator in this revival. This is her second Tony nomination, but Shoshana Bean has three nominations and is likely to win for her portrayal of her quintessential mother in "The Lost Boys.".
CBS broadcasts the Tony Awards ceremony.
The article "2026 Tony Awards: Who Will Win and Who Should Win" first appeared on TheWrap.