Minimum Familiarity: Heard of it. It’s useful to have a sense of what the Tony nomination categories are. If you don’t care about the Tony Awards or haven’t heard of any shows this season, this post probably won’t be the most engaging for you.
This blog is known for having its finger on the pulse of the theater world, and definitely not getting distracted by various related and unrelated topics on a regular basis. Because of that reputation, it only seems logical to produce totally-informed predictions of the Tony nominations for the recently-concluded 2023-2024 Broadway season.
You should basically expect 100% accuracy, but I will add a couple of minor caveats:
- I have not actually seen several of these shows. I’ve seen most of them, okay?! I’m doing my best, and will definitely see all of the nominees that are still playing before publishing my sequel post with predictions of the winners.
- Nobody has ever described me as an objective or even competent theater critic.
Anyway, let’s get into it!
Summary
Starting with a summary is not a great way to get people to read an entire post, but I realize lists of nominations by category may not be the most engaging for all readers. That said, it still might be interesting to see which shows I predict will have the most nomination success this season, and which I anticipate will sadly be snubbed. So here’s a quick summary of nominations by show:
| Show | Predicted Noms |
| Hell’s Kitchen | 8 |
| Here Lies Love | 8 |
| Stereophonic | 8 |
| Purlie Victorious | 7 |
| Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club | 7 |
| The Who’s Tommy | 7 |
| Patriots | 6 |
| Days of Wine and Roses | 6 |
| The Outsiders | 6 |
| Lempicka | 6 |
| The Great Gatsby | 5 |
| Merrily We Roll Along | 5 |
| Mary Jane | 4 |
| Suffs | 4 |
| Doubt: A Parable | 4 |
| An Enemy of the People | 4 |
| Mother Play | 3 |
| Harmony | 3 |
| Appropriate | 3 |
| Uncle Vanya | 3 |
| The Cottage | 3 |
| Prayer for the French Republic | 3 |
| Grey House | 3 |
| Jaja’s African Hair Braiding | 2 |
| The Notebook | 2 |
| The Wiz | 2 |
| Water for Elephants | 2 |
| Back to the Future: The Musical | 2 |
| The Shark Is Broken | 1 |
| Illinoise | 1 |
I foresee a lot of risk in how prolific I anticipate Here Lies Love and Purlie Victorious to be, since both those shows have closed and that generally doesn’t bode well for Tony success (especially for Here Lies Love, which is a musical that intended to have an open-ended run).
The list above leaves six out of the 36 eligible shows this season with no nominations:
- I Need That
- The Heart of Rock and Roll
- How to Dance in Ohio
- Once Upon a One More Time
- Gutenberg! The Musical!
- Spamalot
I hope the nominators find a way to get a nomination in for How to Dance in Ohio, and it’s very possible that some acting nominations could come out of Gutenberg! and Spamalot. But a lot of the categories are really tight this year, so it’s going to be hard for all the great shows to fit.
Last thing before we get to the details: it’s kind of complicated to keep track of which shows, performers, and designers are eligible in which categories. The Tony Awards periodically publish eligibility rulings (this year’s are summarized here) which answer most of the questions I would have. I tried to follow along with those, although I have a note in the Scenic Design categories below about some of the challenges this approach posed for those specific awards.
And now I’ll stop stalling. Let’s get into my predictions for the Tony Award winners for the 2023-2024 season!
The Big Ones
Best Play
- Jaja’s African Hair Braiding
- Mary Jane
- Mother Play
- Patriots
- Stereophonic
I have been pretty unsuccessful at seeing the shows eligible in this category, and it seems like I saw all the worst-reviewed of the bunch. Which is another way of saying that I haven’t seen four of my five predicted nominees, but I do think this wasn’t a bad year for original plays.
Best Musical
- Days of Wine and Roses
- The Great Gatsby
- Hell’s Kitchen
- The Outsiders
- Suffs
By far the most difficult time I had predicting a category, and the resulting list of nominees feels pretty wild. My shot-in-the-dark position is that only one already-closed musical will get a nomination, and that Days of Wine and Roses was among the best received of that class (which also includes Here Lies Love and Once Upon a One More Time). I think Here Lies Love will be adequately nominated elsewhere, but Once Upon a One More Time will not manage to grab a nomination in any categories (despite a couple where I think it would be worthy).
Given how many other nominations I’ve projected for Here Lies Love, it could be a grave miscalculation not to include it here, but the other shows I did include are all great for different reasons and I couldn’t find a good place for it.
There are a lot of shows on the border here, and just outside of making the cut for me are Here Lies Love, Water for Elephants, The Notebook, and Harmony.
Best Book of a Musical
- Days of Wine and Roses (Craig Lucas)
- Harmony (Bruce Sussman)
- The Notebook (Bekah Brunstetter)
- The Outsiders (Adam Rapp and Justin Levine)
- Suffs (Shaina Taub)
Best Original Score
- Days of Wine and Roses (Adam Guettel)
- The Great Gatsby (Jason Howland and Nathan Tysen)
- Here Lies Love (David Byrne and Fatboy Slim)
- Lempicka (Matt Gould and Carson Kreitzer)
- Suffs (Shaina Taub)
As of the publication of this post, betting odds have The Great Gatsby with very little chance of winning, but I think it’s a dark horse! Granted, I’ve had to leave out Stereophonic and The Outsiders, so I can see how my dark horse pick may face obstacles to making the cut.
Best Revival of a Play
- Appropriate
- Doubt: A Parable
- An Enemy of the People
- Purlie Victorious
There are only five eligible shows in this category this year, and the four above received reviews I would characterize as positive overall. With five eligible shows, there will be three or four nominees depending on how close the votes are between the third- and fourth-place shows. I’m predicting Doubt and Purlie Victorious are shoe-ins, and Appropriate and An Enemy of the People come close enough to each other to make the cut together.
This leaves the Steve Carell-led Uncle Vanya off the list, although that show could definitely score some acting and design nominations.
Best Revival of a Musical
- Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club
- Merrily We Roll Along
- The Who’s Tommy
- The Wiz
There are only six eligible shows here, so this is more a matter of choosing that Gutenberg! The Musical! and Spamalot won’t make the cut.
The Hardest Profession in the World
Sure, the title of this section is a deep-cut Fame the Musical reference, but I assume acting is actually hard, if maybe not the hardest of all possible professions. I will say now that of all the categories in this section, I am least certain about my predictions for acting in plays, since I didn’t see enough of those in person to adequately get a sense of which performances were truly distinctive. While I generally avoided it elsewhere, I did consult other sources for ideas in the acting categories, especially on those pesky (i.e., numerous and difficult to catch during a limited run) plays.
Leading Actor in a Play
- Steve Carell for Uncle Vanya
- Leslie Odom, Jr. for Purlie Victorious
- Liev Schreiber for Doubt: A Parable
- Jeremy Strong for An Enemy of the People
- Michael Stuhlbarg for Patriots
Apparently betting odds are pretty good for Steve Carell in Uncle Vanya, but I’ve seen that William Jackson Harper got raves and falls in this category too. Hoping there’s somehow room for both of them, but not predicting it’ll happen.
Leading Actress in a Play
- Laura Bell Bundy for The Cottage
- Rachel McAdams for Mary Jane
- Jessica Lange for Mother Play
- Sarah Paulson for Appropriate
- Amy Ryan for Doubt: A Parable
A star-studded category for sure!
Leading Actor in a Musical
- Ali Louis Bourzgui for The Who’s Tommy
- Jonathan Groff for Merrily We Roll Along
- Brian d’Arcy James for Days of Wine and Roses
- Jeremy Jordan for The Great Gatsby
- Chip Zien for Harmony
As I worked through this category, I realized it was a very good year for lead actors in musicals. I wanted to find room for Justin Guarini here but wasn’t able to make it work. Oddly for a show ostensibly about female empowerment, Justin Guarini’s performance as the misogynistic prince was the highlight of Once Upon a One More Time. And I think Jeremy Jordan does just enough acting to squeak in here, although I would nominate him for his vocal performance alone anyway.
Leading Actress in a Musical
- Eden Espinosa for Lempicka
- Arielle Jacobs for Here Lies Love
- Maleah Joi Moon for Hell’s Kitchen
- Kelli O’Hara for Days of Wine and Roses
- Gayle Rankin for Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club
Featured Actor in a Play
- Will Brill for Stereophonic
- Michael Imperioli for An Enemy of the People
- William Keen for Patriots
- Alex Moffat for The Cottage
- Corey Stoll for Appropriate
Alex Moffat, of SNL fame, is potentially a long shot here. But I thought his physical performance in The Cottage was hilarious and worthy of recognition.
Featured Actress in a Play
- Francis Benhamou for Prayer for the French Republic
- Quincy Tyler Bernstine for Doubt: A Parable
- Juliana Canfield for Stereophonic
- Sarah Pidgeon for Stereophonic
- Kara Young for Purlie Victorious
Featured Actor in a Musical
- George Abud for Lempicka
- Joshua Boone for The Outsiders
- Paul Alexander Nolan for Water for Elephants
- Daniel Radcliffe for Merrily We Roll Along
- Conrad Ricamora for Here Lies Love
I guess the featured categories are hard just because there are so many strong options in all of them. I’m leaving out Brandon Victor Dixon, Roger Bart, Andrew Samonsky, and Wayne Brady, and they’re all incredible too! I don’t think I’ll be unhappy with whoever actually does get nominated here.
Featured Actress in a Musical
- Shoshana Bean for Hell’s Kitchen
- Amber Iman for Lempicka
- Kecia Lewis for Hell’s Kitchen
- Lindsay Mendez for Merrily We Roll Along
- Bebe Neuwirth for Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club
Okay, this category is impossible. There are at least five more actresses who deserve to be nominated (chief among them Jennifer Simard, Joy Woods, apparently half the cast of Suffs, and Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer). So I expect to be very wrong on this category and that’s fine.
The Technical Ones
Many more well-known (i.e., legitimate) sources of awards analysis don’t bother to predict most of the technical categories. But, as you may gather from the other content on this website, I am not at all well-known. Plus I’m quite passionate about technical theater. The only problem is I definitely did not see a good chunk of the plays this season, so I’m going on gut a bit in those categories.
Scenic Design of a Play
- Lael Jellinek for Mary Jane
- Mimi Lien for Uncle Vanya
- Derek McLane for Purlie Victorious
- Scott Pask for Grey House
- David Zinn for Stereophonic
Scenic Design of a Musical
- AMP featuring Tatiana Kahvegian for The Outsiders
- Tim Hatley and Finn Ross for Back to the Future: The Musical
- Riccardo Hernández for Suffs
- David Korins for Here Lies Love
- David Korins and Peter Nigrini for The Who’s Tommy
I don’t necessarily agree with all of these, but this post is about predictions and sometimes designers prefer the flashiest designs (literally lighting on fire, time-traveling cars, complete transformation of the theater space, etc.) to ones that may be the “best” by my definition.
I want to note that I may have accidentally left out a couple of projection designers in both the Scenic Design categories. Since there’s no projection/video design category at the Tony Awards, designers in that discipline often get lumped in with the scenic designers (or occasionally lighting designers, in the case of The Outsiders this season) so there is some way for them to be recognized. But there isn’t clear direction available publicly on every show with projections this year, so when I can’t find specific rulings I assume that only the credited set designer can be nominated.
Costume Design of a Play
- Dede Ayite for Jaja’s African Hair Braiding
- Deborah Andrews and Miriam Buether for Patriots
- Enver Chakartash for Stereophonic
- Sydney Maresca for The Cottage
- Emilio Sosa for Purlie Victorious
Emilio Sosa is the current chair of the American Theatre Wing, the organization that puts on the Tony Awards. I’m always curious how these conversations go… Regardless, I thought Emilio did excellent work on Purlie Victorious.
Costume Design of a Musical
- Linda Cho for The Great Gatsby
- Linda Cho and Ricky Lurie for Harmony
- Sharen Davis for The Wiz
- Clint Ramos for Here Lies Love
- Tom Scutt for Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club
Lighting Design of a Play
- Adam Honoré for Purlie Victorious
- Natasha Katz for Grey House
- Jack Knowles for Patriots
- Amith Chandrashaker for Prayer for the French Republic
- Lap Chi Chu and Elizabeth Harper for Uncle Vanya
Lighting Design of a Musical
- Isabella Byrd for Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club
- Natasha Katz for Hell’s Kitchen
- Bradley King for Lempicka
- Justin Townsend for Here Lies Love
- Amanda Zieve for The Who’s Tommy
I’m predicting Cabaret will get the nom that I really think should go to The Outsiders. I also really wanted to put Once Upon a One More Time in here, but I ultimately opted for Here Lies Love for its success in overcoming the daunting constraints associated with its unique theater configuration.
I will note that if my prediction in this category comes to pass, three of the five nominees will be women. From some quick research, I believe that would be the first time this has happened, with the closest being last year when three of the six nominees were women (although two of them were Natasha Katz, so not sure how you’d count that).
Sound Design of a Play
- Adam Cork for Patriots
- Adam Cork for The Shark Is Broken
- Tom Gibbons for Grey House
- Daniel Kluger for Prayer for the French Republic
- Ryan Rumery for Stereophonic
I haven’t seen enough of the relevant shows to have any confidence in this category.
Sound Design of a Musical
- M.L. Dogg and Cody Spencer for Here Lies Love
- Nick Lidster and Autograph for Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club
- Gareth Owen for Back to the Future: The Musical
- Gareth Owen for Hell’s Kitchen
- Gareth Owen for The Who’s Tommy
I think sound design nominations and winners tend to favor shows with “the most sound” instead of truly “the best sound.” I’m accounting for that in these predictions. For the record, I do think a show like Here Lies Love fully deserves a nomination for the insanely complicated constraints they worked within and overcame.
And I am definitely wary about predicting Gareth Owen will be nominated three times in the same category. But I think those are three of the flashiest designs of the season so I’m sticking with it.
Direction of a Play
- Daniel Aukin for Stereophonic
- Sam Gold for An Enemy of the People
- Anne Kauffman for Mary Jane
- Tina Landau for Mother Play
- Kenny Leon for Purlie Victorious
Direction of a Musical
- Maria Friedman for Merrily We Roll Along
- Michael Greif and Schele Williams for The Notebook
- Jessica Stone for Water for Elephants
- Danya Taymor for The Outsiders
- Alex Timbers for Here Lies Love
Best Choreography
- Camille A. Brown for Hell’s Kitchen
- Julia Cheng for Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club
- Rick Kuperman and Jeff Kuperman for The Outsiders
- Lorin Latarro for The Who’s Tommy
- Justin Peck for Illinoise
Best Orchestrations
- Adam Guettel and Jamie Lawrence for Days of Wine and Roses
- Jason Howland and Kim Scharnberg for The Great Gatsby
- Tom Kitt and Adam Blackstone for Hell’s Kitchen
- Steve Margoshes for The Who’s Tommy
- Cian McCarthy for Lempicka
Is it weird to say the orchestrations were one of the highlights of Hell’s Kitchen? Yeah, probably, but it’s true for me!
I will not be predicting lifetime achievement award recipients (maybe next year), but hopefully you had a good time reminiscing about this jam-packed season of theater. I certainly did! If I predict at least 80% of these nominations correctly I’ll consider this guessing game a success. The last prediction I’ll make is that the actual success ratio will be more like 65%. There’s only one way to find out how wrong I am, and that’s to check back in soon for a debrief on the nomination predictions, plus predictions for who will actually win at the Tony Awards on June 16!
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