The 2023 Tony Award Winners Vs My Predictions

Natasha Yvette Williams (center) and the cast of Broadway’s **Some Like It Hot**. Photo by Marc J. Franklin.

The 2023 Tony Award Winners

It was a super big night for the musical Kimberly Akimbo at this year’s Tony Awards, winning the top prize for Best Musical, as well as Tonys for Best Book and Best Score. In the title role, Victoria Clark won her second Tony Award for Best Lead Actress, and Bonnie Milligan won her first in the Featured Actress category. Leopoldstadt was also on the receiving end, bringing home the Tony for Best Play, and earned a Best Featured Actor Tony for Brandon Uranowitz. All much deserved (in my eyes).

Another cool deliverance was the making of Broadway history when Alex Newell (Shucked) and J. Harrison Ghee (Some Like It Hot) became the first two openly nonbinary actors to win Tony Awards, in the categories of Featured Actor and Lead Actor in a Musical, respectively. (Those two categories were actually chosen by the performers, as the Tonys do not currently have nongendered acting categories.)

The 76th Annual Tony Awards aired live from the beautiful United Palace in Washington Heights last night. Julianne Hough and Skylar Astin hosted The Tony Awards: Act One, a live pre-show that streamed for free on Pluto TV, 6:30pm-8pm ET. The event included the presentation of the first round of Tony Awards. Ariana DeBose hosted the second half of the ceremony, which aired at 8pm ET on CBS and Paramount+. And as it wasn’t scripted because of the writers strike, it was direct and to the point, making for an actually pretty enjoyable telecast.

The full list of winners and nominees is below. Winners are bolded with an asterisk. My reviews of the shows are hyperlinked.

When the nominations were first announced, I wrote: No surprise here that the new wildly fun Broadway musical, Some Like It Hot, based on the classic comedy film walked away today with the highest number of nominations, a total of thirteen, for the 2023 Tony Awards. Announced this morning, the musical was followed closely by the pop-fantastic & Juliet, the hilariously charming Shucked, and my least favorite show of the season, New York, New York. Each with nine nominations apiece. So start spreading that news.

It was an exciting morning for a few others that will do battle for that coveted Best New Musical Tony Award. Up against them will be one of the season’s most favored shows, Kimberly Akimbo, nominated for eight Tonys, including the actors; Bonnie Milligan and Justin Cooley for supporting roles, and Victoria Clark for the title role.

Ben Rappaport and Sean Hayes in Broadway’s **Good Night, Oscar**. Photo by Joan Marcus.

Jessica Chastain also led the stellar revival of A Doll’s House into the race, as well as nods for Tom Stoppard’s epic Leopoldstadt, and the sharp Ain’t No Mo‘, with six nods each.

Other hit shows also received a number of nominations: the Encores! revival, Parade starring Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond picked up six nominations, and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, led by Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford received eight.

The Best Musical Revival category will be the race to watch, with Parade and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street doing battle with Lincoln Center‘s Camelot as well as Sondheim’s other revival, Into the Woods which, like Parade, transferred from New York City Center to Broadway.

David Zayas and Katy Sullivan in MTC’s **Cost of Living**. Photo Credit: Julieta Cervantes (2022).

Also up for Best Play alongside Ain’t No Mo‘ and Leopoldstadt, are Between Riverside and Crazy, Cost of Living, and Fat Ham, which won last year’s Pulitzer Prize for drama. Best Revival of a Play nominees includes A Doll’s House, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, Suzan-Lori Parks’ Topdog/Underdog, and August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson.

Notable omissions were Laura Linney in MTC’s Summer 1976, even as co-star Jessica Hecht was nominated, LaTanya Richardson Jackson failed to be nominated for directing the revival of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, and Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan did not get recognized for their work in the late arriving The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window.