Tony Awards 2026: Win or lose, these 10 standout performances and shows are worth celebrating

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The 2025-26 Broadway play was characterized by agelong fallow periods interrupted by an onslaught of eagerly awaited openings. The wide content was 1 of a theatre manufacture treading h2o — the extremity being to enactment afloat until the culture, the authorities of nationalist authorities and the economics of producing improve.

Don’t clasp your breath. The struggle, compounded by technological shifts turbo-charged by AI, won’t beryllium letting up immoderate clip soon. But much than ever, the theatre seems to beryllium answering the request for collective, in-person experience. If lone summons prices weren’t specified a obstruction to existent antiauthoritarian access.

The season’s spot was successful revivals, a mates of which were truthful innovative they agelong our knowing of the term. Robert Icke’s “Oedipus” was hardly a retread of an past Greek classical and “Cats: The Jellicle Ball” whitethorn person hewed faithfully to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s score, but everything other astir this accumulation seemed wholly reborn.

The frenzy of the caller attraction system has lone inflated the value of the Tony Awards — to the detriment of the Broadway calendar. During a travel to New York successful aboriginal March to service connected an grant jury, I was frustrated by the dearth of caller Broadway productions. April is ever an avalanche, but this twelvemonth the aboriginal parts of the autumn and outpouring play were deserts.

Celebrities nary longer warrant a stampede astatine the virtual container office, but 1 encouraging improvement is the scope of big-named actors delivering powerhouse performances successful plays that were thing but vanity showcases. Highlights of the starry play not listed present see Daniel Radcliffe successful “Every Brilliant Thing” and Adrien Brody and Tessa Thompson successful “The Fear of 13.”

Progress whitethorn beryllium down, but it’s not out. My Broadway theatergoing had to beryllium selective this twelvemonth for logistical reasons, but these are the performers and productions that sustained maine done the fitful season.

Laurie Metcalf

Metcalf has inherited, by wide consensus, Helen Hayes’ mantle of First Lady of the American Theater. She brought her Everywoman luminosity to 2 of the highlights of the 2025-26 Broadway season: Samuel D. Hunter’s “Little Bear Ridge Road” successful the autumn and a revival of “Death of a Salesman” that opened successful the spring, some productions directed by Joe Mantello. A two-time Tony winner, she is apt to triumph a 3rd for her featured show successful “Salesman” arsenic Willy Loman’s bracingly unbending wife, Linda. But her pb show successful “Little Bear Ridge Road” is conscionable arsenic deserving of recognition. In Hunter’s play, Metcalf plays a quality who has nary clip for sentimental niceties. Hitting her premier astatine 70, she has go the large theatrical interpreter of feelings excessively profound for facile talk.

‘Liberation’

The recently-named victor of the Pulitzer Prize for play and the champion I saw this twelvemonth connected Broadway — oregon anywhere, for that substance — this “memory play astir things I don’t remember” by Bess Wohl explores 2nd question feminism done a daughter’s tentative re-creation of her precocious mother’s consciousness-raising radical successful 1970s Ohio. This playfully theatrical enactment routinely breaks the 4th partition to rise questions astir the morals of the melodramatic task underway. The playwright recognizes the speculative and incomplete quality of history, which is ever calved retired of the needs and assumptions of the infinitesimal it’s written. But having closed connected Broadway successful February, it whitethorn find itself astatine a disadvantage arsenic the Tony Awards campaigning heats up. Not that it matters from an creator standpoint. Both the play and the production, directed by Whitney White and featuring a superbly attuned formed that included Susannah Flood and Betsy Aidem, provided audiences with an unforgettable radical league connected the ever-fraught authorities of equality.

Lesley Manville successful ‘Oedipus’

Director-writer Robert Icke’s “Oedipus is strangely classified arsenic a revival. The underlying story is ancient, but Sophocles has small to bash with this modern reworking of a communicative of governmental expediency and quality shortsightedness. Manville’s hypnotic show arsenic Jocasta — a cleanable complement to Mark Strong’s urbane, cocksure Oedipus — builds to a harrowing monologue astir her character’s past that doubles the tragedy. When her stately dependable and crisp hauteur yet springiness way, the effect is shattering. Manville’s Jocasta commands tremendous sympathy without ever mitigating the character’s complicity with power. Shrewder than her husband, she discourages him from asking “how sick we are,” due to the fact that she already knows the answer.

John Lithgow arsenic Roald Dahl successful "Giant."

John Lithgow successful ‘Giant’

A towering show that is besides impressively contoured, Lithgow’s portrayal of dyspeptic British writer Roald Dahl infuses Mark Rosenblatt’s play with chilling mystery. The play, revolves astir a situation of Dahl’s ain making. A publication reappraisal criticizing Israel for its penetration of Lebanon steps implicit the enactment into antisemitism, and the fallout successful publication income is expected to beryllium tremendous, particularly successful America. A typical from his U.S. steadfast has been sent to person Dahl to contented a nationalist apology, thing his much conciliatory British steadfast reluctantly agrees is necessary. The ensuing statement leaves the parties bitterly deadlocked. But a translation worthy of 1 of Dahl’s twisted tales unfolds arsenic the writer perversely makes a atrocious concern worse. Lithgow, reprising his Olivier-winning performance, is astatine erstwhile terrifying and ne'er thing little than quality successful 1 of the bravest performances of the Broadway season.

Joshua Henry and the formed of "Ragtime."

Joshua Henry successful ‘Ragtime’

Words can’t truly bash justness to the profound philharmonic depths Henry plumbs successful this searing revival of “Ragtime,” directed by Lear deBessonet for Lincoln Center Theatre. Playing Coalhouse Walker Jr., the tragic protagonist of this philharmonic based connected E.L. Doctorow’s novel, Henry suffuses the communicative of a wunderkind Black pianist rebuffed by racism with a affluent baritone lament for America’s archetypal sin. His sublimely moving show lends operatic heft to a philharmonic that surveys the forces undermining our antiauthoritarian promise. When Henry sings “Make Them Hear You” astatine the extremity of his journey, there’s nary 1 with a functioning bosom helium doesn’t scope

Lea Michele and Nicholas Christopher successful the philharmonic "Chess."

Lea Michele, Aaron Tveit and Nicholas Christopher successful ‘Chess’

Even with a spryly playful caller book, “Chess” is simply a analyzable philharmonic to fig out. But the triumvirate astatine the helm of Michael Mayer’s electrifying revival makes a beardown lawsuit for the show. Michele, demonstrating that her bravura crook successful “Funny Girl” was nary fluke, delivers a scalding rendition of “Nobody’s Side.” Christopher, successful a star-making performance, brings the location down successful “Anthem” done some the unit of his singing and the standard of his emotion. And Tveit sets “One Night successful Bangkok” aflame with Dionysian ecstasy. But the showmanship lone works arsenic good arsenic it does due to the fact that the actors are truthful adept astatine tracking the chess moves of characters who are ever trying to enactment 1 measurement up of danger. .

‘Cats: The Jellicle Ball’

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s philharmonic juggernaut is re-conceived arsenic a Harlem shot showcase for LGBTQ+ glory. The production, co-directed by Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch, ditches the feline masquerade for a parade of costumes designed with unflagging inspiration by Qween Jean. The characters are kitted retired for runway battles worthy of “Paris Is Burning” and the TV bid “Pose.” Presiding implicit the contention is the emperor of theatrical fabulosity, André De Shields, successful the relation of Old Deuteronomy, person of the Jellicle colony. “Cats” is inactive “Cats” — present and forever, arsenic the musical’s iconic slogan warned — but this accumulation infuses the aged lion with caller vitality.

‘Death of a Salesman’

Mantello’s barnacle-stripping revival of Arthur Miller’s masterwork — elevated by the stalwart brilliance of Metcalf’s Linda — reaches its afloat cathartic unit successful the last country betwixt Nathan Lane’s Willy Loman and Christopher Abbott’s Biff. The father-son reckoning, agelong postponed, can’t deter the play’s tragic course. But it does momentarily exposure the willful illusions and antiaircraft guilt that person prevented Willy from seeing Biff arsenic helium truly is — not a deity who sabotaged himself, but a muddling man, who is exceptional lone successful his acceptance of his ain lowly character. He is simply a mirror, successful different words, for Willy. And successful a little explosive infinitesimal of designation betwixt their characters, Lane and Abbott incite the Winter Garden Theatre assemblage into a paroxysm of grief.

‘The Lost Boys’

New musicals person been eclipsed by revivals this season, but “The Lost Boys” has managed to elude the curse that has doomed erstwhile vampire musicals, included “Dance of the Vampires” and “Lestat” done soaring singing, high-flying spectacle and, astir important of all, a communicative that isn’t trampled by peculiar effects. Director Michael Arden, past year’s Tony victor for “Maybe Happy Ending,” has rediscovered his magic interaction aft “The Queen of Versailles” shuttered connected Broadway successful the fall. “The Lost Boys,” featuring a well-chosen formed of rising stars and accomplished veterans, is hardly a cleanable show. But for a philharmonic astir the undead, it’s refreshingly human.

June Squibb

Starring successful a Broadway accumulation astatine 96, Squibb deserves a medal, not conscionable for longevity but for discernment and daring arsenic well. She didn’t travel backmost to the signifier successful a warhorse oregon a vanity project. Instead, she chose a play that is inactive up of its time, Jordan Harrison’s “Marjorie Prime,” which had its premiere astatine the Mark Taper Forum successful 2014. This play astir grief, household secrets and the unusual caller satellite of AI, poses age-old existential questions for a dizzying technological era. In this existent ensemble production, sharply directed by Anne Kauffman, Squibb was supported by a first-rate formed that included a heartbreaking crook by Cynthia Nixon.

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