Lest anyone doubt this past Broadway season was an especially fruitful one for new musicals, this year’s Tony Award nominations have made it official. A trio tops the list of contenders in a three-way tie, with each of them — Buena Vista Social Club, Death Becomes Her, and Maybe Happy Ending — up for 10 trophies, including Best Musical.
These different shows underline the breadth of Broadway’s 2024–2025 roster, which is also reflected in the wider list of nominees, representing 29 productions in all.
Maybe Happy Ending, an original, achingly poignant (and funny) love story involving two obsolete robots who meet several decades in the future, is up for best book and score, both by Broadway newcomers Will Aronson and Hue Park. The show, which received heady critical acclaim last fall, also earned nods for director Michael Arden — a winner two years ago for his revival of Parade — and leading actor Darren Criss, and its cinematic visuals were recognized in design fields.
Death Becomes Her, a zesty adaptation of the 1992 film comedy starring Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn as two women whose quest for eternal youth and beauty leads them to a magic formula with ugly results, also received nominations for book and score — the first by Marco Pennette, the latter by Julia Mattison and Noel Carey — and for Christopher Gattelli’s direction and choreography. Both Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard, respectively cast in the roles originated by Streep and Hawn, are candidates for leading performance by an actress in a musical.
The joyful Buena Vista Social Club, inspired by and named after a much-loved collective of mostly Cuban musicians who released a Grammy Award–winning album in 1997, wasn’t eligible for original score, but was recognized for its book by Marco Ramirez; director Saheem Ali and choreographers Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck — the latter a two-time winner, most recently for last season’s Illinoise — are also nominees, as is featured actress Natalie Venetia Belcon. Like Maybe Happy Ending and Death Becomes Her, the show is up for several design awards as well.
Buena Vista Social Club is one of several musicals and plays that transferred after earning praise Off-Broadway. Another, the hilariously morose Dead Outlaw, based on the true story of a corpse who became an enduring tourist attraction, scored seven nominations, including best musical, book, score, and direction. Composer/lyricist David Yazbek, librettist Itamar Moses, and director David Cromer previously won Tonys for their work together on The Band’s Visit, awarded best musical in 2018; this time they’re joined by songwriter Erik Della Penna, Yazbek’s collaborator on Dead Outlaw’s music and lyrics, with Andrew Durand up for leading actor and Jeb Brown for featured actor.
The West End transfer Operation Mincemeat rounds out the list for best musical with broad British humor. Its creators — David Cumming, Natasha Hodgson, and Zoe Roberts, who also appear in the show, and Felix Hagan — found comic inspiration in a World War II spy plot intended to foil the Nazis. They’re also up for best book and score, and another cast member, Jak Malone, was nominated for featured actor.
Three other productions garnered seven nods apiece, including two additional U.K. imports. A starkly flamboyant staging of Sunset Blvd. grabbed nominations for best revival and for its celebrated director and leading lady — respectively, Jamie Lloyd and pop idol–turned–acclaimed actress Nicole Scherzinger — and for English leading man Tom Francis, who, like Scherzinger, made his Broadway bow in the production.
The Hills of California, a haunting account of a stage mother and her daughters that follows the children into troubled adulthood, collected three of its seven acknowledgments for playwright Jez Butterworth, director Sam Mendes, and leading actress Laura Donnelly — all venerated stage and screen artists who also worked together on 2018’s The Ferryman, which won Tonys for Butterworth and Mendes the following year.
The homegrown John Proctor is the Villain, which follows a class of high school students grappling with Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and their own trials at the height of the #MeToo era, is another candidate for best play. First-time Broadway author Kimberly Belflower was included in its seven nominations, alongside director Danya Taymor — last year’s winner for director of a musical, for The Outsiders — and leading actress Sadie Sink, who acted on Broadway as a child and made her return after rising to stardom on Stranger Things.
A visually spectacular prequel to that hit Netflix series, Stranger Things: The First Shadow picked up nominations for leading actor Louis McCartney and in four design categories, but didn’t make the cut for best play, where Hills and John Proctor face competition from two highly regarded Off-Broadway transfers: Sanaz Toossi’s Pulitzer Prize–winning English and Cole Escola’s Oh, Mary! — as well as Purpose, the latest offering from two-time Pulitzer finalist Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, a Tony winner last year for a revival (and the Broadway debut) of his searing satire Appropriate.
The sizzling Purpose, which explores the tensions festering within an accomplished, high-profile Black family, earned six nods in all. Two of its cast members, Jon Michael Hill and Harry Lennix, are up for leading actor, LaTanya Richardson Jackson for leading actress, and Glenn Davis for featured actor; while Kara Young is competing for the featured actress prize — which she won last year for the revival of Purlie Victorious.
Oh, Mary!, the rollicking parody that skews closer to farce in its reimagining of Abraham Lincoln’s brilliant and tragic trajectory, and English, a witty and moving study of Iranian students trying to learn that language, each collected five nominations. Oh, Mary!’s include two for Escola, who, in addition to writing the play, slayed New York audiences with their wild reinvention of Mary Todd Lincoln. Director Sam Pinkleton was also acknowledged, as was Conrad Ricamora for his featured performance. English’s nominees include director Knud Adams and featured actresses Tala Ashe and Marjan Neshat.
Other productions that received multiple nominations include Just In Time, a new musical celebrating the late pop star Bobby Darin; Jonathan Groff, who plays Darin, is up for the leading actor award, which he won last year for Merrily We Roll Along. A revival of Gypsy collected five, including one for Danny Burstein — his eighth in a featured category (he won for Moulin Rouge! The Musical five years ago) — and another for leading actress Audra McDonald, who already holds the record for most Tonys for acting, with six. This honor means McDonald also becomes the most nominated performer, with eleven.
This year’s nominees include other A-list stars of stage and screen, from two-time Academy Award winner and Broadway newbie George Clooney — a contender for leading actor in a play for his portrait of TV news legend Edward R. Murrow in the five-times-nominated Good Night, and Good Luck, adapted from his 2005 film — to Mia Farrow, acknowledged for her first appearance in a decade in the twisting comedy The Roommate.
Sarah Snook, known to TV fans for her Emmy Award–winning turn in Succession, earned her nod for leading actress in a play juggling 26 roles in director Kip Williams’s stunning adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, another West End transfer. Williams and numerous designers were also recognized, bringing the show up to six nods. The Broadway premiere of Floyd Collins, Adam Guettel and Tina Landau’s account of a cave explorer whose last journey set off a media circus — first staged Off-Broadway in 1996 — also won a half dozen nominations, with one for leading man Jeremy Jordan and another for best revival.
Pirates! The Penzance Musical, an irreverent, jazzy spin on Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic operetta, completes the list of contenders for revival of a musical. Nominees for revival of a play include director Sam Gold’s own contemporary take on Shakespeare, Romeo + Juliet; Kenny Leon’s staging of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town; and two Broadway premieres, Jonathan Spector’s Eureka Day and David Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face. Daniel Dae Kim, who appeared in the latter, is up for leading actor.
Other acting nominees include Jasmine Amy Rogers, whose exuberant starmaking performance as a cartoon character who comes to life in BOOP! The Musical earned her a nomination for leading actress; and James Monroe Iglehart, a winner in 2014 for his featured role as the Genie in Aladdin, now being considered for leading actor after playing the title part in A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical.
Theater fans will spot other familiar names in the featured acting categories, from previous Tony winner Gabriel Ebert, now up for John Proctor, to Jessica Hecht and Taylor Trensch, for their roles in, respectively, Eureka Day and Floyd Collins. Musical comedy stalwart Brooks Ashmanskas received his third Tony nomination, for SMASH, while Justina Machado got her first for Real Women Have Curves: The Musical, an adaptation of the play and film that also collected a nod for Joy Huerta and Benjamin Velez’s original score.
The field of choreography is also starry, promising another tight race. In addition to Gattelli and Delgado and Peck, there are three-time Tony winner Jerry Mitchell, for BOOP!; Joshua Bergasse, who earned his second nomination for SMASH; and Camille A. Brown, who received her fifth — in only seven years — for Gypsy.
The Tony Awards will air live on June 8 from Radio City Music Hall, with previous winner and three-time Oscar nominee Cynthia Erivo hosting. Fans can watch at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on CBS.