2022 Tonys: Who will win, who should win, and other predictions

Also nominated: “Six,” “Girl From the North Nation,” “MJ,” “Paradise Square,” “Mr. Saturday Night”

The Billy Crystal auto “Mr. Saturday Evening,” which had a run even though in growth at Barrington Stage Corporation previous slide, attributes a lauded flip by the comedy legend, but the display does not have much buzz. Neither does the overstuffed and overwrought “Paradise Square.” The Michael Jackson bio-musical “MJ” has gained kudos for Christopher Wheeldon’s electrifying staging and choreography. But can a present that sidesteps the allegations versus its matter garner enough votes to win? The luminous “Girl From the North Country” corrals the music of Bob Dylan to inform a story of solitary souls inhabiting a boarding household in the course of the Excellent Melancholy. This contest, however, is most likely a showdown concerning “Six” and “A Bizarre Loop.” Toby Marlowe and Lucy Moss’s exhilarating “Six,” whose pre-Broadway tour arrived to the American Repertory Theater in 2019, flaunts an irreverent, woman-empowered spin on the tales of the six wives of Henry VIII. But it’s Michael R. Jackson’s audacious, spectacularly profane, subversive meta-musical “A Strange Loop,” about a queer Black musical theater author, that certainly pushes the boundaries of the type, not to mention providing a jolt to the diversity of perspectives on Broadway.

Greatest Participate in

Will/Should really earn: “The Lehman Trilogy”

Also nominated: “Clyde’s,” “Hangmen,” “Skeleton Crew,” “The Minutes”

Dominique Morisseau’s “Skeleton Crew,” viewed at the Huntington Theatre Firm in 2018, tells the tale of squeezed workers at an automotive stamping plant through the Good Economic downturn. Lynn Nottage’s scalding comedy “Clyde’s” unfolds within a sandwich shop where 4 previously incarcerated staff aspiration huge and desperately try out to dodge the demands and put-downs of their fire-respiratory manager. Tracy Letts’s “The Minutes” transforms from a bureaucratic satire into an excavation of evil as it digs into the dark truths hidden driving the veneer of a town council in the Midwest. Martin McDonagh’s gift for blending the madcap and the macabre is on full display in his darkish comedy “Hangmen,” which spins a tale, established in 1965, about England’s 2nd most-prolific hangman and the mysterious stranger who visits the pub that he owns. While it closed final slide, Stefano Massini’s dazzling “The Lehman Trilogy,” adapted by Ben Ability, is the frontrunner listed here. Instructed on a human scale with a few actors condition-shifting into an array of characters, this epic tale of moral decay elucidates 160 many years of American capitalism by means of the heady increase and swift tumble of Lehman Brothers.

Best Revival of a Musical

Will/Should really earn: “Company”

Also nominated: “Caroline, or Alter,” “The New music Man”

Meredith Willson’s common “The New music Guy,” starring Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster, is the season’s massive box office winner. But this significant-spirited yet anodyne revival doesn’t present refreshing insights into the tale of con guy Harold Hill. In its place, this award styles up as a confront-off in between Jeanine Tesori and Tony Kushner’s shattering “Caroline, or Adjust,” loosely based on Kushner’s individual childhood and established amid the upheaval of the civil legal rights-period South, and a chic new just take on Sondheim’s “Company,” reimagined with a woman, even though nonetheless defiantly one, Bobbie. Enlivened by Tesori’s prosperous, eclectic rating, “Caroline” grapples with difficulties of race, course, and electricity in its portrait of a lonely, motherless boy and his family’s Black maid, a proud lady fatigued by a lifetime of injustice. With “Company,” not only does Marianne Elliott’s gender-swapped revival boast a powerhouse Patti LuPone belting out the survivor’s anthem “The Ladies Who Lunch,” but it reinvigorates the tale with new resonance and poignancy by turning the main character into a woman dealing with middle age and the fading probability of motherhood (although unspoken). Voters just can’t go completely wrong with possibly option. But honoring the legendary Sondheim 6 months following his passing appears apt.

Most effective Revival of a Enjoy

Will win: “Take Me Out”

Need to win: “How I Discovered to Drive”

Also nominated: “for colored women who have regarded suicide/when the rainbow is enuf,” “Trouble in Mind,” “American Buffalo”

Far more than 65 decades immediately after a planned Broadway operate of Alice Childress’s backstage drama “Trouble in Mind” was scuttled (when Childress refused to make revisions), the enjoy eventually designed its searing Broadway debut. But this award is shaping up as a 3-way race. There’s rising momentum guiding Camille A. Brown’s electrifying revival of Ntozake Shange’s “for coloured ladies …,” a style-defying “choreopoem” that feels in particular well timed as it examines the full spectrum of Black womanhood, from hope and joy to betrayal and sorrow to love and loss. One more long-awaited Broadway debut, Paula Vogel’s “How I Discovered to Drive,” which premiered in 1997 off-Broadway, returns to the stage with its authentic stars Mary-Louise Parker and David Morse. The drama, motivated by Vogel’s possess childhood practical experience, examines the sexual abuse of an adolescent by her uncle. But it’s Richard Greenberg’s 2002 drama “Take Me Out” that will likely earn. The participate in explores masculinity and sexuality in its story of a celebrity baseball player who comes out as gay.

Ideal Actor in a Musical

Will/Should earn: Jaquel Spivey, “A Strange Loop”

Also nominated: Myles Frost, “MJ” Hugh Jackman, “The Audio Man” Billy Crystal, “Mr. Saturday Night” Rob McClure, “Mrs. Doubtfire”

Jackman, who’s already won two Tonys, has manufactured a welcome return to Broadway as con gentleman Harold Hill, and voters could select to reward him for his devotion to the marketplace for the duration of a turbulent time. Or they may perhaps want to honor the 74-calendar year-previous Crystal with a vocation capstone. But this race is very likely among Spivey and Frost. While Frost has attained praise for his captivating efficiency and spot-on impersonation of Michael Jackson’s moves and mannerisms, will voters reward a display about the polarizing King of Pop? In its place, financial institution on them anointing Spivey. He offers a wounded, lacerating, and hilariously filthy overall performance as a homosexual Black guy tormented by an internal refrain of stress, doubt, and self-loathing, not to point out the soreness and trauma of his past and existing.

Greatest Actress in a Musical

Will/Must Win: Sharon D. Clarke, “Caroline, or Change”

Also nominated: Joaquina Kalukango, “Paradise Square” Sutton Foster, “The Tunes Man” Carmen Cusack, “Flying Over Sunset” Mare Winningham, “Girl From the North Country”

Foster provides wit and allure to the fussy, shut-off Marian the Librarian, but she’s now gained two Tonys. The often-influencing Winningham offers a poignant, soulful performance as the dementia-suffering wife of a lonely boarding home operator in “Girl From the North Place,” imbuing heartache and pathos to her elegiac renditions of “Like a Rolling Stone” and “Forever Young.” As a steely bar owner, Kalukango has been bringing audiences to their ft with her exhilarating effectiveness highlighted by the present-halting anthem “Let It Melt away.” She could spring the upset, but this award even now would seem like Clarke’s to shed. She received an Olivier Award for enjoying Caroline in London, and she delivers a bone-deep transform as a happy Black lady triumph over by grief, rage, and feelings of injustice.

Greatest Actor in a Play

Will/Must acquire: David Morse, “How I Figured out to Drive”

Also nominated: Simon Russell Beale, “The Lehman Trilogy” Adrian Lester, “The Lehman Trilogy” Adam Godley, “The Lehman Trilogy” David Threlfall, “Hangmen” Sam Rockwell, “American Buffalo” Ruben Santiago-Hudson, “Lackawanna Blues”

The a few British stars of “The Lehman Trilogy,” who morphed into various generations of people, could break up many of the ballots, even though voters could coalesce all-around Beale, who’s been Tony-nominated ahead of but has never won. Threlfall, who delivers a towering performance as a previous executioner, could also be a contender. But glimpse for Morse, a Hamilton, Mass., native who received his start off in theater in Boston in the 1970s, to seize his initially Tony. Returning to the function that attained him a 1997 Obie award, Morse provides a tormented switch as a sexual predator who gets an empathetic confidant to his youthful niece in buy to get her have faith in.

Ideal Actress in a Play

Will gain: Mary-Louise Parker, “How I Learned to Drive”

Should acquire: LaChanze, “Trouble in Mind”

Also nominated: Deidre O’Connell, “Dana H.” Gabby Beans, “The Skin of Our Teeth” Ruth Negga, “Macbeth”

Could the luminous Parker, a screen star who will work commonly onstage, genuinely gain one more Tony (her third) right after capturing the award previous fall for “The Audio Inside”? Do not rely her out! She’s the consummate chameleon as she transforms from an grownup reflecting back again on trauma to a shy, self-conscious youngster to a wry, flirtatious teenager. O’Connell is a sentimental favorite between New York theater insiders, but Lucas Hnath’s “Dana H” closed soon after a limited run, so not more than enough voters may have found her solo overall performance as the playwright’s mom, recounting (by lip-syncing to genuine tape recordings) how she was held captive for five months by a psychotic consumer. In the meantime, LaChanze, a 2006 Tony winner for “The Color Purple,” charts the journey of a veteran actress fed up with the compromises and costs of acquiescing to the theater industry’s racism and bigotry.

Christopher Wallenberg can be reached at [email protected].