Tony Nominees Answer One Question: What Would They Bring to Broadway With No Budget Limits? Here Are the Answers
by Clayton Davis · VarietyThis year’s Tony nominees are answering a hypothetical Broadway call.
Every nominee got the same closing question on the day of the Meet the Nominees event in New York City on May 14: With unlimited money, unlimited power, and no obligation to turn a profit — what would they bring to Broadway tomorrow?
The answers are mostly split into two tiers. Some named a show, while others built a new ecosystem. And one was answered before the question even finished.
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“Rocky Horror Show” lead actress nominee Stephanie Hsu spent her imaginary infinite resources on access. “Every public school student in New York City should be able to see a Broadway show, any Broadway show,” Hsu says. “If there’s an empty seat, a young person should get to just be there.”
The directing duo of the musical revival “Cats: The Jellicle Ball,” Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch, arrived independently at a near-identical instinct: the thing they would fund is the thing they already made, because “this culture of ballroom deserves everything,” Levingston shared.
“Ragtime” star Brandon Uranowitz went imperial. He fantasized about building a much-needed new theater near Lincoln Center, then taking over the Times Square theater district and rotating Stephen Sondheim revivals through every house, “Follies,” “Company,” “Sweeney Todd” and on.
The second tier was a bit more personal and inventive, rooted in life and a love of the art.
Pointing to his half-Moroccan roots, featured actor nominee Ali Louis Bourzgui of “The Lost Boys” has always wanted Paulo Coelho’s novel “The Alchemist” to be a musical. “That whole story is about Andalusia, southern Spain and northern Morocco. There’s something really ripe there, combining those musical traditions and bringing it to the stage,” he tells Variety. “I would probably fast-track producing that.”
Coming off her Oscar nomination this year, “Fallen Angels” lead actress nominee Rose Byrne wants to bring “Cloudstreet” to the theater district, the Australian classic she grew up on. At the same time, “Ragtime” lead actress Caissie Levy wants her U.K. version of “Next to Normal” to finally bow in New York, having played Diana Goodman in the London production and earned an Olivier nomination for best actress in a musical.
Then there was the seven-word answer. Veteran stage performer and “Death of a Salesman” nominee Laurie Metcalf named something she swears will never happen: “I would like to be in ‘Gypsy'” she says with a smile and a chuckle.
Her co-star Nathan Lane would build an American national theater on the London model. “You try to find a company of actors, and then have guests coming in and doing new plays, and great classics. It would be a wonderful thing,” he said. “Whether it could be subsidized by the government, I don’t think that could happen. But if I had unlimited money, I would.”
“Titanique” creator, executive producer, and lead actress Marla Mindelle, who is making history at this event as the first woman to be triple-nominated at the Tonys, looked inward first. “What needs to come to Broadway is the next musical that I’m writing,” she says with a wink, declining to name the celebrity it will feature.
She then followed with another project she’s working on — Mindelle is co-writing a stage musical of the 1998 comedy “There’s Something About Mary” with the film’s co-director and co-writer Peter Farrelly. Pressed for something already established, she went, in her word, “obscure”: a revival of “Zorba!,” the 1968 Greek musical she grew up listening to.
A few of the nominees were caught off guard.
“Giant” actor John Lithgow deflected entirely, trusting other people’s bright ideas over his own. Tony winner Danny Burstein turned the question back on the Variety interviewer as a joke, pitching a story about a working-class kid from Brooklyn who ends up an awards editor. (We humbly, emphatically, disagree.)
“Ragtime” featured nominee Ben Levi Ross, who reached for a friend’s work, Amy Herzog’s “4000 Miles,” which ran off-Broadway in 2011 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. He also floated a Harold Pinter project, though not one of Pinter’s own famed written plays. Instead, an adaptation of Jean-Paul Sartre’s “No Exit,” which Pinter starred in.
And of every nominee inventing a Broadway production on the spot, none was faster than “Ragtime” star and Tony nominee Joshua Henry. “‘Goddess,’ starring Amber Iman,” he declares at lightning speed. “Why ‘Goddess’ is not on Broadway in 2026, I don’t know. Bring us ‘Goddess.'”
No one needed to think about it less.