Welcome back to Tony Talk, a column in which Gold Derby contributors Sam Eckmann and David Buchanan offer Tony Awards analysis. Now that the dust has started to settle on the 2026 Tonys, we convene to preview the productions already slated for the new season and project the likeliest 2027 Tony contenders.
David Buchanan: Sam, it has become one of my favorite Tony Talk traditions for us to document our very first and very nebulous predictions for the next award season, right on the heels of the current Tonys. It’s also fun to go back and read the column from the last year to see how spot-on or off-the-mark we were!
On Sunday, we wrapped an extremely competitive Best Musical race between Schmigadoon! and The Lost Boys in a year that was notoriously sparse in new musicals. Let’s start our extremely early predictions there, because thus far for the 2027 Tonys, we have two confirmed contenders in Wanted and Galileo, plus the all-but-officially confirmed Paddington: The Musical, which Neil Patrick Harris and Pink nodded to in the epic Tonys opening number.
Once formally announced, Paddington will become a de facto front-runner for the prize, right? It’s coming from abroad tied for the second-most number of Olivier Award nominations in history with 11 and tied for the most overall Olivier wins for any musical or musical revival ever at seven trophies, alongside the likes of Hamilton, Jamie Lloyd’s Sunset Boulevard, and more. Which of those productions are you most excited to see, and do you anticipate we’ll have a fuller roster of shows by the time nominations are announced 11 months from now?
Sam Eckmann: Well David, at the very least we should be able to scrounge up more new musicals for next year’s Tony season compared to this year’s race! There are a handful of unannounced shows hoping to get their financing in place and secure a theater for this season, but if we focus our crystal ball-gazing on the three known quantities, then Paddington does appear to be best positioned for Tony success. The score is charming and sophisticated, its story is accessible to all ages, and the way the titular bear is brought to life via multiple actors and an animatronic suit is pure stage magic. My only hesitation is that British and American theater audiences often have vastly different tastes. We’ve seen this play out when a play like Punch wins the Olivier Award for Best Play yet can’t even muster the equivalent Tony nomination. Olivier voters also bestowed Back to the Future: The Musical with their Best Musical prize before Broadway audiences and critics largely shrugged their shoulders at it. Paddington is popular in the States, but perhaps not the same type of cultural phenom that he is in the U.K.
I’m quite intrigued by Wanted, which I sadly missed at Paper Mill Playhouse when it ran under the title Gun & Powder. This show, about two real-life outlaw sisters in the late 1800s Texas, could become the American-born challenger to Paddington’s splashy British import. It’s directed by Stevie Walker-Webb, who helmed the riotous and poignant Ain’t No Mo’, my favorite play of 2022. One Clarke sister is played by Solea Pfeiffer, who has quickly garnered attention for her dazzling vocal performances in Hadestown, Moulin Rouge, and Hamlet in Central Park. Wanted could be a breakout star turn for her, or for Liisi LaFontaine, another powerhouse vocalist playing the second Clarke sister.
I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention the excitement around Galileo, as it promises the Broadway return of Raúl Esparza. This will be the actor’s first Broadway outing in 14 years, after the short-lived Leap of Faith in 2012. After delivering a definitive take on Bobby in Company, Esparza’s Lead Actor in a Musical loss to David Hyde-Pierce for Curtains in 2006 remains one of the most shocking upsets in the history of the Tony Awards. Galileo, which reunites Chess writer Danny Strong and director Michael Mayer, could be the project that allows Esparza to finally cash in his IOU from Tony voters.
This season promises to be chock full of musical revivals. Although we are still largely in the dark on casting for these shows, do you have any sense of which ones might snatch the most Tony nominations?
Buchanan: I am also extremely excited for both Paddington and Wanted, not to mention the return of Joy Woods to Broadway in Galileo with Esparza!
Since we led with Paddington and the Olivier Awards, it’s fitting we start our discussion of the musical revivals with Jamie Lloyd’s Evita. After months and months of speculation — and debate about how to stage “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” in an equally-unique way as they did in London outside the theater — Evita has finally confirmed its run at the Winter Garden, opening in March, just in time for peak 2027 Tony season. Lloyd brought his bold, incredibly inventive directorial vision to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Blvd. to Broadway two years ago, and that production won three Tonys for Best Musical Revival, Best Actress for Nicole Scherzinger, and Best Lighting Design. I imagine we already have our Best Actress front-runner this year with Rachel Zegler.
As we covered in our Oliviers column, Eva Perón is a gargantuan role, which won Patti LuPone her first Tony, and Zegler has proven that she’s up for the challenge herself, taking home the Olivier this year. I imagine Lloyd will bring over Diego Andres Rodriguez, last seen on Broadway in Sunset, as Che, but the full casting has not been announced yet. I hesitate to say this will be our Tony nominations leader, though, because it received a more muted overall response in the U.K. than Sunset Boulevar. did, so I’m curious to see if Tony nominators will remain as enamored with Lloyd’s style.
Before we get all the way to March, we’ll have a revised version of the off-Broadway staple The Fantasticks from Second Stage Theater beginning in October. The updated libretto and lyrics by original writer Tom Jones will now center two young men, and this updated production will be directed and choreographed by Christopher Gattelli. Gattelli has been on an absolute tear lately, earning dual Tony nominations the past two seasons for directing and choreographing Death Becomes Her and our newest Best Musical winner, Schmigadoon! I’m excited to see what he does with this revamped material, and I’m eager for a casting announcement here as well.
Speaking of casting, do you believe we’re finally getting a revival of Dreamgirls this season, directed and choreographed by Camille A. Brown, no less! Brown has amassed five Tony nominations in the last eight years, from Choir Boy to for colored girls, Hell’s Kitchen, and Audra McDonald’s Gypsy, but she hasn’t picked up her first trophy yet. If this production lands as strongly as I’m expecting it will, then I’m wagering now that she takes home a Tony come June of next year!
Elsewhere, Roundabout Theatre Company recently announced the first Broadway revival of The Full Monty. This show marked the Broadway debut of one of my favorite contemporary composers, David Yazbek, so I’m very excited to hear this score on a New York stage for the first time, since I missed the original production back in 2000. There’s also rumblings about the majors stars who are circling Sergio Trujillo’s remounting of Damn Yankees, which is slated for a spring 2027 opening. Which of these five productions is leaping off the page at you?
Eckmann: Interestingly, the four directors you mentioned all seem poised for an inevitable Tony win soon. Brown and Lloyd have yet to win. Gattelli and Trujillo have both won Best Choreography, for Newsies and Ain’t Too Proud, respectively; but they are still searching for their first win for directing. It’s quite possible that next year’s winner will come from this quartet of New York theater favorites.
It’s hard to call an early favorite without knowing the vision behind most of these productions. And if the whisperers I’m hearing are to be believed, we should expect one more major revival of a beloved classic to join this crowded lineup in the spring. But Damn Yankees had a rapturous response during its pre-Broadway run at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. The last Broadway revival of this musical closed in 1995, so it has the potential to feel fresh and revitalized. I, too, have been hearing some all-star casting rumors, so I definitely have my eye on this one. But until we know more about concepts and casts, Evita is the known quantity in this revival lineup and most pundits will probably peg that Jamie Lloyd reinvention as an early frontrunner.
Evita isn’t the only show that Lloyd will bring to New York this season. The director is taking up shop in the Winter Garden Theatre as a transfer of his Much Ado About Nothing will play a limited run there before Eva Perón takes over. Hayley Atwell (in her Broadway debut) and Tom Hiddleston star as Beatrice and Bennedick in the Shakespeare comedy that hasn’t been produced on Broadway since 1985. Those terrific leading roles should make them instant Tony contenders.
They will surely have competition in the acting races from the stars of the forthcoming revival of Other Desert Cities. Emmy winner Julia Louis-Dreyfus is making what is sure to be the buzziest Broadway debut of the season in a role that earned Stockard Channing a Tony nomination back in 2012. Broadway producers have been courting Louis-Dreyfus for years, and I cannot wait to see the Veep star translate her biting comedy to the stage. The production will also feature Ed Harris, Joe Keery, Lily Rabe, and Allison Janney; all of whom are searching for their first Tony win. Janney has a delicious part that won Judith Light a Tony for Featured Actress, and I expect Janney to at least repeat that nomination.
Of course, one of my most anticipated plays is one that doesn’t feature any famous A-Listers. A stage version of Paranormal Activity opens this September and color me intrigued! I’ve heard positive reactions from its London run, and with horror being an incredibly rare genre for Broadway, it has the potential to standout from the rest of the more conventional plays in contention. Are you feeling the spooky vibes or looking forward to other upcoming star turns?
Buchanan: Of the shows you’ve mentioned, I am most thrilled about Other Desert Cities. I have been waiting for Julia Louis-Dreyfus to make her Broadway debut for what feels like an eternity, and the announcement that she’s doing this play caught me totally by surprise in the best possible way! Even though it has only been 14 years since the original production closed, the play will feel incredibly topical again, and I can’t wait to revisit it. The entire ensemble seems perfectly selected, though I must confess they will have the unenviable task of living up to the impeccable original cast and Joe Mantello’s direction; I can’t imagine anyone playing Silda better than Judith Light, and I still vividly remember her final moments acting with that teacup at the very end of the first act. But if I had to pick someone to do it, it would be Janney!
It’s been over a decade since we’ve had a Shakespearean comedy on Broadway, going back to Mark Rylance’s Twelfth Night in 2013, so I’m looking forward to Much Ado About Nothing, too. Although an entirely different genre, I really loved Hiddleston’s collaboration with Jamie Lloyd on Betrayal in 2019, so I’m looking forward to their partnership continuing on this work.
As for other plays I’m most excited to see, I have to mention the just-announced Broadway debut of the Pulitzer Prize finalist play Gloria by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. He has had two smash successes in recent Broadway seasons with Tony wins for Appropriate and Purpose, and I can’t wait to see this show – and its shocking twist – for the first time on the Main Stem. It’s very early yet, but I’m tempted to go out on a limb and predict he’ll be a three-time Tony-winning playwright by this time next year! There will also be the reteaming of the Jaja’s African Hair Braiding writer-director duo Jocelyn Bioh and Whitney White on School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play, which I missed off-Broadway, and the transfer of Inter Alia from the West End starring Olivier Award winner Rosamund Pike.
Come next June, it will be interesting to see if we’re calling the 2026-27 season a year of plays or musicals, since they seem pretty evenly matched right out of the gate. We’ll be back in a few months time to start breaking it all down, all over again!
