For a Broadway season that will go down in the record books for its abbreviated 42-week length, Covid cancelations and stark decline in attendance attributable at least in part to New York City’s pandemic-era dearth of tourists, the 2021-22 theatrical season was surprisingly healthy in one very significant way: As this year’s Tony Awards nomination roster makes clear, Broadway venues were well-stocked with the talent and quality that can make trophy-voting an endless cycle of on-the-other-hand second guessing and nitpicking.In a Broadway season that made noticeable (if never enough) strides in presenting new creative voices – Black artists, Queer artists, artists who brought downtown avant-garde sensibilities uptown – so much of the work represented in this year’s Tony nominations roster is bold in ways that would have been unthinkable just a couple seasons ago before the disaster of Covid and the miracle of Black Lives Matter arrived to shake things up.Of course, not everything that opened on Broadway this season was award-worthy – now is probably not the time to name those names, but you can read my Broadway reviews for the season to get the idea – but it’s more than safe to say that, in a season when illness and economy teamed up to form a daunting and damaging coalition, each and every staging was worthy of celebration and our gratitude.As for the award-worthy, here are my choices and predictions for this weekend’s 75th annual Tony Awards.
The four-hour June 12 Tony evening begins at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT with The Tony Awards: Act One, a one-hour streaming event of exclusive content live on Paramount+ hosted by Darren Criss and Julianne Hough.
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