Tony Award for Best Musical
The Tony Award for Best Musical is given annually to the best new Broadway musical, as determined by Tony Award voters. The award is one of the ceremony's longest-standing awards, having been presented each year since 1949. The award goes to the producers of the winning musical. A musical is eligible for consideration in a given year if it has not previously been produced on Broadway and is not "determined... to be a 'classic' or in the historical or popular repertoire", otherwise it may be considered for Best Revival of a Musical.[1]
| Tony Award for Best Musical | |
|---|---|
| Awarded for | Best Musical |
| Location | New York City |
| Presented by | American Theatre Wing, The Broadway League |
| Currently held by | A Strange Loop (2022) |
| Website | TonyAwards.com |
Best Musical is the final award presented at the Tony Awards ceremony. Excerpts from the musicals that are nominated for this award are usually performed during the ceremony before this award is presented.
This is a list of winners and nominations for the Tony Award for Best Musical.
Winners and nominees
†indicates the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama[2]
*indicates a finalist of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama[2]
1940s
| Year | Musical | Book | Music | Lyrics |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1949 3rd Tony Awards | ||||
| Kiss Me, Kate | Bella & Samuel Spewack | Cole Porter | ||
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s
2020s
Records
Accumulated records as of 2022:[3]
- The Producers has won the most Tonys, winning in 12 categories, including Best Musical.
- Hamilton is the most-nominated production in Tony history, with 16 nominations.
- The Sound of Music and Fiorello! are the only two musicals to date to have ever tied for the Best Musical award (in 1960).
- Passion is the shortest-running winner, with 280 performances. (If preview performances are included, then that distinction belongs to A Strange Loop)
- The Phantom of the Opera is the longest-running Best Musical winner, with 16 previews and over 13,981 performances.[4]
- Hallelujah, Baby! is the only show thus far to have won the Tony Award for Best Musical after closing.
- Kiss Me, Kate and Titanic are the only two shows to win the Tony Award for Best Musical without any Tony nominations in the acting categories. (In Kiss Me, Kate's case, only winners were announced that year, and only in the lead performance categories.)
- Two Gentlemen of Verona (1972), Raisin (1974), 42nd Street (1981) and A Strange Loop (2022) won Best Musical and only one other Tony Award.
- What is now the Richard Rodgers Theatre has housed more Best Musical winners than any other theater on Broadway: Guys and Dolls (1951), Damn Yankees (1956), Redhead (1959), How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1962), 1776 (1969), Raisin (1974), Nine (1982), In the Heights (2008), and Hamilton (2016).
- The Mystery of Edwin Drood was the first winner of the Tony Award for Best Musical to be entirely written by one man, Rupert Holmes. Rent (by Jonathan Larson), Hamilton (by Lin-Manuel Miranda), and A Strange Loop (by Michael R. Jackson) also achieved this feat. Hadestown is the first musical entirely written by one woman, Anaïs Mitchell, to win this award.
- Fun Home was the first musical written entirely by a team of women to win the Tony Award for Best Musical.
- The 74th Tony Awards (2020) is the first ceremony in which only jukebox musicals were nominated.
See also
References
- Staff (undated). "Rules & Voting". tonyawards.com. Retrieved September 13, 2013.
- "Drama". www.pulitzer.org.
- "Facts About the Tony Awards". Tony Legacy. The American Theatre Wing. 2016. Retrieved May 18, 2016.
- "'The Phantom of the Opera' closes on Broadway after 35 years". AP NEWS. April 17, 2023.