The 77th Tony Awards will air on Sunday, June 16, celebrating the best that Broadway theater had to offer in the 2023-2024 season (according to a particular body of voters). Unlike many other awards shows, the Tonys ceremony is also a vital marketing tool; the right performance or win can help sustain a show through the summer, or beyond. (Conversely, a lack of wins can sometimes close a show.) What productions will get the Broadway bump this year? Our panelists hash it out on this week’s roundtable episode of the Little Gold Men podcast.
LGM co-host Richard Lawson enlisted VF staff writer Chris Murphy, freelance journalist Esther Zuckerman, and Vulture critic Jackson McHenry to make their predictions, and all agreed that the show of the year, at least as far as the Tonys are concerned, is Stereophonic. An off-Broadway transfer, David Adjmi’s three-hour play about a Fleetwood Mac-like band has been praised for its stellar performances and note-perfect music. The production is so beloved that it became the most-nominated straight play in Tonys history. It even picked up nominations in categories that typically are reserved for musicals, like best score.
This only added to the narrative that in the 2023-2024 season, plays triumphed over musicals on the Great White Way. While a few musical standouts like Alicia Keys’s Hell’s Kitchen and the dance-forward Illinoise (featuring songs from the celebrated Sufjan Stevens album) made their mark (and could win big on Sunday), it was the talky dramas that had theatergoers buzzing most this season. Stereophonic was joined by the Sarah Paulson-led Appropriate, a rousing Jeremy Strong in An Enemy of the People, star turns from Rachel McAdams and Jessica Lange in Mary Jane and Mother Play. A lot of big names are duking it out for top Tony honors, but the LGM crew thinks that Paulson and Strong will prevail in the end.
Stereophonic seems likely to win best play, while best musical is a murkier matter. Hell’s Kitchen is a crowd pleaser, as is Illinoise. But neither features new songs, and Illinoise is mostly a dance piece. Could the suffragist rabble rouser Suffs, a brand new but properly old-fashioned musical not based on any I.P., eke out a win based on originality alone? The race seems to be a three-way heat, though Water for Elephants has been praised for its stagecraft, while The Outsiders features lovely Americana tunes and inventive direction. We’re softly predicting that Suffs will snatch the win for being the closest thing to Hamilton since that show swept the Tonys almost 10 years ago.
For more insights into theater’s biggest night, listen to this week’s episode of Little Gold Men above, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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