The 2025-2026 Broadway season — the highest-grossing in historical past at $1.9 billion, regardless that it included solely six new musicals, that are often what drive ticket gross sales — got here to an finish on Sunday night time with the 79th Tony Awards at Radio City Music Hall in New York. The decision of the 831 voters? Ten exhibits had been worthy of recognition in at the very least one class: Becky Shaw, Cats: The Jellicle Ball, Demise of a Salesman, Big, Fallen Angels, Liberation, The Misplaced Boys, Oedipus, Ragtime and Schmigadoon!.
Greatest musical, the one Tony that tends to lead to a significant box-office enhance for its winner, went to Schmigadoon!, a Lorne Michaels-backed sendup of golden age Broadway musicals, over The Misplaced Boys, a present that appealed to a youthful demo. It was a battle of display screen variations — Schmigadoon! was impressed by the Apple TV collection of the identical identify, whereas The Misplaced Boys is a musical spin on the 1987 movie of the identical identify — which shared the distinction of most Tony noms of any show this season, 12.
In what was seen as a equally shut contest, Lincoln Heart’s manufacturing of Ragtime, the second on Broadway because the present first ran from 1998 by 2000, received greatest revival of a musical over Cats: The Jellicle Ball, an edgy reimagining of the polarizing show that ran on the Nice White Approach from 1982 by 2000.
The remaining musical awards, which contemplate each new productions and revivals alongside one another, had been unfold pretty evenly between the aforementioned 4 exhibits. Greatest path went to Cats (particularly to the crew of Zhailon Levingston and Invoice Rauch), as did greatest choreography and costume design (making Qween Jean the primary overtly trans individual to win a Tony). Greatest actor and actress went to Ragtime’s Joshua Henry and Caissie Levy, respectively, and the present was additionally acknowledged for greatest sound design. The Misplaced Boys claimed greatest featured actor and featured actress for, respectively, 26-year-old Ali Louis Bourzgui, who upset Cats’ André De Shields, and veteran trouper Shoshana Bean, in addition to lighting design of a musical and scenic design of a musical. (The legendary De Shields, 80, received seven years in the past for Hadestown.) And Schmigadoon! additionally took house greatest e book, unique rating and orchestrations. (Its wins made Apple TV the fastest streamer to an EGOT, simply six-and-a-half years after its launch.)
Liberation, a reminiscence play about Nineteen Seventies feminism, which began off Broadway and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for drama last month, was chosen for the very best play Tony over Big, a troubling portrait of kids’s writer Roald Dahl for the time being when he was first dealing with accusations of antisemitism — this although the previous closed again in February, whereas the latter remains to be operating and an enormous field workplace hit, having recouped its $5.6 million capitalization in simply 10 weeks.
Relatively remarkably, Liberation scribe Bess Wohl grew to become the first female American playwright in 38 years to win the best play Tony, following the late Wendy Wasserstein, who was awarded it for The Heidi Chronicles. Oddly sufficient, although, that top honor was the one win of the night time for Liberation, whereas Big claimed its sole trophy for its lead actor John Lithgow, marking his third Tony win, 53 years after his first.
Many of the awards for performs, although, went to a universally-acclaimed manufacturing of Arthur Miller’s “Great American Play,” Demise of a Salesman. Its sixth remounting on Broadway because the 1949 unique was acknowledged with greatest revival, path (Joe Mantello’s third Tony for steering, after the play Take Me Out in 2003 and the musical Assassins in 2004), featured actress (Laurie Metcalf’s third win, all within the final decade, after A Doll’s Home, Half 2 in 2017 and Three Tall Girls in 2018), lighting design, scenic design and sound design. Certainly, no present of any style was acknowledged with extra Tonys this yr than the six for Demise of a Salesman.
Alas, the present’s heartbreaking Willy Loman, Nathan Lane, was stopped wanting a fourth Tony win by Lithgow, in what was in all probability probably the most closely-watched race of the night time; and Biff Loman, 40-year-old Christopher Abbott, was upset by a fellow younger thespian who can be recognized for display screen work, 36-year-old Alden Ehrenreich for Becky Shaw, a revival of a darkish comedy by which Ehrenreich portrays a truly toxic male.
Ehrenreich’s win was the one one for Becky Shaw. This yr’s two different exhibits with one-off wins had been Oedipus, for which Lesley Manville received greatest actress in a play in recognition of her Broadway debut at age 70 (the present closed again in February); and Fallen Angels, the primary Broadway revival in 70 years of a lesser-known Noel Coward comedy (it closed earlier on Sunday), which snagged greatest costume design for a play.
In the meantime, 14 Tony-nominated exhibits went house completely empty-handed: Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Throughout New York), The Balusters, Little Bear Ridge Highway, Titaníque, Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Present, Each Good Factor, Punch, Bug, Chess, Marjorie Prime, Ready for Godot, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Canine Day Afternoon and The Concern of 13.
Enjoyable reality: three of the six Tony-nominated performers who appeared on this year’s THR Tonys Roundtable — Bean, Henry and Lithgow — took house {hardware}.
