‘Schmigadoon!’ and ‘The Lost Boys’ Lead Tony Award Nominations but the Play’s Not the Thing for Several Notable Overlooked Actors

The list of contenders for the Tony Awards, Broadway’s biggest trophy, announced yesterday morning, always brings surprises but this year’s most glaring snub did not come as a complete shock. Yet this time in 2025 few could have predicted that when the nominations were announced for the following season, a new musical by Stephen Schwartz, the beloved composer/lyricist of post-Golden Age classics stretching from “Pippin” to “Wicked,” would be shut out entirely.“The Queen of Versailles,” Mr. Schwartz and playwright Lindsey Ferrentino’s adaptation of a 2012 documentary following a billionaire’s efforts to recreate a historic palace for his wife, was generally panned and closed after only 49 post-preview performances. But some critics, this one included, noted its creative ambition and social resonance, and the production’s widely admired leading lady and man, Kristin Chenoweth and F. Murray Abraham, also drew praise, all of which might have been considered.Instead, the most Tony nods for the 2025-6 season, which was, to put it generously, a lean one for new musicals, went to a pair of other at least technically original works: “Schmigadoon!” and “The Lost Boys,” which tied with a dozen nominations each. (New musicals are eligible for best book and several other categories that don’t always apply to other shows; this year, two of the four candidates for best original score were for incidental music used in plays.)The very loud “Lost Boys” was inspired by a 1987 flick tracking a family that moved to a town riddled with vampires; “Schmigadoon!” was lifted from a TV series that parodied and gushed over musicals from a bygone era, when the pickings were a lot less slim. Both shows are now competing for best musical, book, score, director, choreography, and orchestrations, and in numerous acting and design categories. The British import “Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)” and the campy off-Broadway transfer “Titaníque” received eight and four nominations, respectively, while yet another, less well-received screen adaptation, “Beaches: A New Musical,” went unnoticed.Tellingly, revivals of musicals were among the most popular shows with nominators. An acclaimed staging of “Ragtime,” Stephen Flaherty, Lynn Ahrens, and Terrence McNally’s adaptation of E.L. Doctorow’s novel tracing immigrant families in the early 20th century, reaped eleven nominations, including revival, director, choreography, and in design fields and for several performers, among them Broadway favorites such as Joshua Henry and Brandon Uranowitz, both up for leading actor, and Caissie Levy, tapped for leading actress.A playful production of the cult classic “The Rocky Horror Show” and “Cats: The Jellicle Ball,” which joyfully reimagined Andrew Lloyd Webber’s heavy-handed twist on T.S. Eliot, were each recognized nine times and will vie with “Ragtime” for best revival. A starry staging of “Chess” didn’t make the cut for that last category, and perhaps even more surprisingly, its five nominations didn’t include two musical theater luminaries, Aaron Tveit and Lea Michele.Among plays, a revival of “Death of a Salesman” led by Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf got the most love, with Mr. Lane, already a four-time Tony winner, becoming the latest A-lister to earn appreciation tackling Arthur Miller’s doomed protagonist Willy Loman. Ms. Metcalf was acknowledged, albeit in the featured category, for playing Willy’s long-suffering wife, Linda; veteran director Joe Mantello and featured actor Christopher Abbott also received nominations, as did the revival.A new staging of another American classic, August Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” collected five nominations, also including best revival. The other nominees in that field include, in addition to Noël Coward’s “Fallen Angels,” shows that have never been produced on Broadway before, Gina Gionfriddo’s “Becky Shaw” and “Every Brilliant Thing,” written by Duncan Macmillan with Jonny Donahoe, and “Oedipus,” British director and playwright Robert Icke’s modern reinterpretation of Sophocles’s tragedy, which was recently a contender for the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for best play of the season.The play that won that award, “Little Bear Ridge Road,” a harrowing account of a family reunion that marked the Broadway debut of Samuel D. Hunter, a long-celebrated writer, is a nominee for the Tony for best play as well, despite having closed after a short run last year. “Marjorie Prime,” another glowingly received work that introduced Broadway audiences to an exciting and prolific playwright, Jordan Harrison, wasn’t nominated as a play or revival, despite remaining as startlingly resonant in its focus on artificial intelligence as it was prophetic in its 2014 premiere.Still, “Little Bear” will face stiff competition from “Giant,” a ferocious study of author Roald Dahl’s antisemitism, “Liberation,” Bess Wohl’s homage to second wave feminism, which just picked up this year’s Pulitzer Prize for drama; and “The Balusters,” the latest entry from David Lindsay-Abaire, a Tony and Pulitzer winner. Acting nominees include, as usual, both theater stalwarts and marquee names. The race for performance by an actor in a leading role in a play is typically one of the tightest, and this year should prove no exception, with Mr. Lane up against John Lithgow for his ferocious but nuanced portrait of Dahl in “Giant” and Daniel Radcliffe for his endearing turn in the far gentler “Every Brilliant Thing.” Mark Strong and Will Harrison are also in contention, respectively for the title role in “Oedipus” and that of a young man who turns his life around after a horrific crime in “Punch.”The leading actress field is similarly daunting, with “Fallen Angels” stars Kelli O’Hara and Rose Byrne, both widely and deservedly adored, competing against one of our best contemporary stage and screen actresses, Carrie Coon — who returned to the theater this season for the first Broadway production of “Bug,” by her husband, Tracy Letts, a play that should have been nominated somewhere — and one of Britain’s finest, Lesley Manville, who made a long overdue Broadway bow in “Oedipus.” Susannah Flood, who rounds out the category for her work in “Liberation,” has also earned considerable acclaim.Other notable nominees range from film star Alden Ehrenreich, who won raves for his substantial featured part in “Becky Shaw,” and June Squibb, who at 96 is now the oldest performer to be nominated for a Tony, for her feisty, funny work, also in a featured role, in “Marjorie Prime.” One of Ms. Squibb’s cast mates, nine-time Tony nominee and one-time winner Danny Burstein, picked up another, but a more widely famous one, Cynthia Nixon, was among a number of big names who didn’t.The overlooked also include, in addition to some previously mentioned, “Bill & Ted” stars Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, who co-starred in a not-ready-for-prime-time “Waiting for Godot,” as well as two-time Oscar winner Adrien Brody and recent Academy Award nominee Tessa Thompson, who appeared together in the London transfer “The Fear of 13,” another show that was ignored altogether. So were revivals of critically lauded, award-winning plays “Proof” and “Art,” and with them stars such as Don Cheadle and Ayo Edebiri (“Proof”) and Bobby Cannavale, James Corden, and Neil Patrick Harris (“Art”).Fans who aren’t too put off by those omissions can watch the Tony Awards broadcast live from Radio City Music Hall on Sunday, June 7. As long as you’re not in the press room, it’s always fun.

‘Schmigadoon!’ and ‘The Lost Boys’ Lead Tony Award Nominations but the Play’s Not the Thing for Several Notable Overlooked Actors

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