| 75th Tony Awards | |
| Date: | June 12, 2022 |
| Location: | New York City, New York |
| Hosts: | Ariana DeBose Darren Criss and Julianne Hough (preshow) |
| Most Wins: | Company and The Lehman Trilogy (5) |
| Most Nominations: | A Strange Loop (11) |
| Network: | CBS Paramount+ |
| Ratings: | 3.9 million |
| Producer: | Ricky Kirshner Glenn Weiss |
| Director: | Glenn Weiss |
| Previous: | 74th |
| Main: | Tony Awards |
| Next: | 76th |
| Venue: | Radio City Music Hall |
The 75th Tony Awards were held on June 12, 2022, to recognize achievement in Broadway productions during the 2021–22 season. The ceremony was held at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, with Ariana DeBose serving as host of the main ceremony, and Darren Criss and Julianne Hough co-hosting a streaming pre-show.
The most-awarded productions of the season were the new play The Lehman Trilogy, which won five awards, including Best Play, and the revival of Stephen Sondheim's musical Company, which also won five awards, including Best Revival of a Musical. The Pulitzer Prize-winning musical A Strange Loop was the most-nominated show of the season, with 11 nominations, and won Best Musical, becoming the first Best Musical winner to win only two awards total since 42nd Street (1981).
With her nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Musical in A Strange Loop, L Morgan Lee became the first openly transgender person to be nominated for a Tony.[1] Additionally, with her win as a lead producer of A Strange Loop, Jennifer Hudson became the 17th person to win Emmy, Grammy, Academy, and Tony awards in their entertainment career.[2]
Returning to its usual June scheduling, the ceremony's telecast was split between Paramount+ and CBS. Paramount+ streamed an hour-long pre-show, The Tony Awards: Act One, which was hosted by Darren Criss and Julianne Hough and featured "special performances" and the presentation of selected awards.[3] It was followed by the main ceremony telecast on CBS and Paramount+, which was hosted by Ariana DeBose. For the first time, the ceremony was televised live nationally.[4] [5] [6]
Act One:
Main Show:
The following shows and performers performed on the ceremony's telecast:[7]
Act One:
Main Show:
The Tony Awards eligibility cut-off date for the 2021–22 season was May 4, 2022 for all Broadway productions which meet all other eligibility requirements.[8] Nominations for the 2022 Tony Awards were announced by Adrienne Warren and Joshua Henry on May 9, 2022. They were initially going to be announced on May 3, but were extended a week to accommodate possible COVID-19 outbreaks.[9] [10] [11] [12] A revival of West Side Story that opened on February 20, 2020 was considered ineligible for the 74th Tony Awards because too few nominators and voters had seen it before Broadway shut down on March 12, 2020 due to the pandemic, and it did not resume when Broadway reopened in September 2021.
34 shows were eligible. All eligible shows are below.[13]
Winners are listed first, and are highlighted in boldface:[14]
‡ The award is presented to the producer(s) of the musical or play.
| Awards | Production |
|---|---|
| 5 | Company |
| The Lehman Trilogy | |
| 4 | MJ |
| 2 | Dana H. |
| Six | |
| A Strange Loop | |
| Take Me Out |
Robert E. Wankel was awarded the Isabelle Stevenson Award for "his generosity and service to the welfare of our Broadway community, over the past four decades and, especially in the face of a global crisis."[15] The award for Excellence in Theatre Education will also be brought back this year.[16] The recipients of the Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre include the Asian American Performers Action Coalition, Broadway for All, music copyist Emily Grishman, Feinstein's/54 Below, and United Scenic Artists (Local USA 829, IATSE).[17] On May 23, 2022, it was announced that Angela Lansbury would be receiving a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement.[18] The Regional Tony Award was given to the Court Theatre.[19] James C. Nicola, retiring artistic director of the New York Theatre Workshop after 34 years, also received a Special Tony Award.[20]
The ceremony received generally favorable reviews from critics. On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the program received six positive and two negative reviews, for an approval rating of 75%.[21]
In Variety, Gordon Cox praised the opening number of the CBS telecast and DeBose's performance as host therein, singling out the performance as "hip and queer and sexy, and it satisfied the old-school avids as much as it made Broadway look like a place the cool kids might want to check out, too".[22] Jennifer Vanasco of NPR also praised DeBose, writing "Let Ariana DeBose host everything [...] She was funny and playful, strutting into the audience and sitting on Andrew Garfield's lap. She was poignant, coming to tears as she talked about her theater teacher mentor. She was honest, gently commenting on the racial disparities in the theater industry".[23] Writing for the Associated Press, Jocelyn Noveck called the telecast "exuberant" and said that it showed "Broadway is back, with verve and creativity, and it is here to stay. It just needs even more people filling the seats".[24]
Johnny Oleksinski of the New York Post panned the show, describing it as "low-energy, poorly put-on", writing that DeBose's "songs and banter were forced and unfunny", and heavily criticizing the ceremony's tribute to Stephen Sondheim, which he deemed "far too modest [...] a total afterthought".[25]
The CBS telecast was watched by 3.86 million viewers in the United States, marking a 39% increase from the previous year's ceremony, the lowest-rated Tony Awards broadcast since viewership was measured. However, when compared to the 73rd Tony Awards in 2019, which were the last one before the 75th to run three hours and the last one before the COVID-19 pandemic, viewership declined 29% between 2019 and 2022.[26]