Tony Awards: What to Expect and How to Watch Tonight

The awards ceremony will honor performs and musicals that opened all through a pandemic-shortened eligibility interval — from April 26, 2019, to Feb. 19, 2020. Solely 18 displays had been eligible for awards — about half as many as common — and only 15 scored nominations.

Most likely the most-nominated displays are the musicals “Jagged Little Pill,” with 15, “Moulin Rouge! The Musical,” with 14, and “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical,” with 12, along with “Slave Play,” which with 12 is the most-nominated play in Tonys historic previous.

The ceremony, initially scheduled to occur in June 2020, has been repeatedly delayed and rethought; the nominations, chosen by 41 theater consultants who observed every eligible current, had been launched ultimate October, and digital voting, by 778 producers, performers and completely different enterprise insiders, took place in March. The ballots had been saved by the accounting company Deloitte & Touche LLP, which come what may has managed to take care of them secret ever since.

There are a selection of unusual aspects to this season’s Tonys race.

Your complete nominees for best ranking are performs — an odd state of affairs introduced on by the reality that three of the 4 musicals that opened sooner than the pandemic had been jukebox musicals, which implies they didn’t have genuine scores, and the fourth was shut out by nominators.

In a single class, best important actor in a musical, there is only one nominee, Aaron Tveit of “Moulin Rouge!” He’ll win if he’ll get a constructive vote from 60 p.c of people who solid ballots in that race.

A starry dwell efficiency will dominate the televised portion of the night time.

The Broadway League and the American Theater Wing, the two organizations that present the Tony Awards, decided, in discussions with CBS, that the portion of the night time with the broadest attain — that’s, on group television — might be primarily a dwell efficiency.

The target is to highlight Broadway’s experience, and to remind viewers of the pleasures of reside theater, with the hope that a number of of those viewers will then buy tickets to a gift as theaters in New York (and world vast) search to rebuild audiences.