Andrew Lloyd Webber Could Accomplish This Rare Feat with a Best Musical Revival Win for ‘Cats: The Jellicle Ball’
David Buchanan
In the past 31 years of Tony Awards history, only three composers’ or lyricists’ productions have won consecutive prizes in the Best Musical Revival category. In less than two weeks’ time, Andrew Lloyd Webber could join that prestigious club.
The storied composer’s reimagined CATS: The Jellicle Ball is nominated this year for the prize, following immediately on the heels of director Jamie Lloyd’s equally radical remounting of Webber’s Sunset Blvd., which took home the award in 2025.
Although this feat wouldn’t seem too uncommon given how often the staples of the modern musical theatre canon receive new productions, Webber would shockingly be only the fourth to do so.
The first and thus far only individual whose work has been recognized three times in a row is lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II. Carousel, Show Boat, and The King and I claimed the Best Musical Revival prize from 1994 to 1996; Carousel and The King and I were co-written with his frequent collaborator Richard Rodgers, Show Boat with composer Jerome Kern.
The team of John Kander and Fred Ebb are the only others who have won consecutively in Best Musical Revival, when restagings of Chicago and Cabaret won in 1997 and 1998, respectively, right on the heels of Hammerstein’s threepeat.
This particular production of Chicago began with Bebe Neuwirth, Ann Reinking, and James Naughton and endures today, now very near to celebrating its thirtieth anniversary. Sam Mendes’ production of Cabaret similarly established a new paradigm for the musical, which starred Alan Cumming and Natasha Richardson; Roundabout Theatre Company remounted this production a decade after it closed, with Cumming reprising his Tony-winning performance.
Should Webber win this year for CATS: The Jellicle Ball, he would be the only individual of this quartet of writers to actually take home a trophy as a producer.
Webber received a personal Tony nomination this year as co-producer through his production company Lloyd Webber Harrison Musicals; though the production company served as lead producer on last year’s Sunset Blvd., official public records do not indicate that Webber personally received the Tony, as the producing credit reads “Michael Harrison for Lloyd Webber Harrison Musicals.”
While Webber seems on the cusp of joining Hammerstein, Kander, and Ebb with a victory for CATS: The Jellicle Ball, the production’s chances at receiving the top honor are far from preordained.
Gold Derby currently has The Jellicle Ball out front of its chief competition, Lincoln Center Theater’s Ragtime, with a 62% chance of winning. The vast majority of experts — of which this author is one — predict it to win by a 10-1 margin.
But Ragtime has been re-establishing momentum in the race thanks to its numerous victories at the smaller industry awards in the leadup to the Tony ceremony. Its romp through those trophies include wins at the Drama Desk Awards, Outer Critics Circle Awards, Drama League Awards, and a special citation from the New York Drama Critics’ Circle.
In the industry, these awards are not conventionally understood as a strong barometer of the Tony winners, predominantly because there is scant overlap between their voting bodies and the pool of Tony voters. Further, differences in eligibility have unquestionably favored Ragtime, as CATS: The Jellicle Ball competed for many of these prizes for its off-Broadway production at the Perelman Performing Arts Center last year. With the exception of the Drama League Awards, only brand-new elements of the Broadway production of The Jellicle Ball were considered eligible to compete against Ragtime this year.
These prizes have nonetheless reasserted Ragtime’s strength in the field, as they have its director, Lear deBessonet, too, after her victories for Best Director with many of these same awards bodies.
In recent years, there has been a strong correlation between an innovative directorial concept and overall vision and the Best Musical Revival prize, even if the director doesn’t prevail. Think, for instance, Jamie Lloyd for Sunset Blvd. last year, even though he lost to Michael Arden for Maybe Happy Ending; not to mention Arden for Parade, Marianne Elliott for Company, Daniel Fish for Oklahoma!, which won Best Musical Revival even though he lost to Rachel Chavkin for Hadestown, and, a little more distantly, Diane Paulus for Pippin.
This trend perhaps bodes better for The Jellicle Ball’s directors Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch, as they brilliantly recontextualize the world of the musical within ballroom culture. Although epic in scope and evocatively staged, deBessonet’s work on Ragtime does not seem quite as reinterpretative of the original production and text.
If Webber wins this year, he could ultimately tie Hammerstein’s all-time record next season with the recently announced transfer of Jamie Lloyd’s Evita starring Rachel Zegler.
Although far too early to prognosticate its 2027 Tony Awards prospects — especially against a still-unknown field of contenders — Evita did not perform nearly as well at the Olivier Awards as Lloyd’s Sunset Blvd. years prior. That Lloyd production earned one of the highest nominations tallies in the history of the UK theatre awards with 11 citations; even more impressively, it is currently tied as the most awarded musical ever with seven, alongside Cabaret, Hamilton, Matilda, and this year’s Paddington: The Musical.
Evita, by comparison, nabbed only five nominations. At the recent ceremony, it did successfully claim Best Actress in a Musical for Zegler — sure to be a fierce 2027 Tony contender in the same category — and Choreography for frequent Lloyd collaborator Fabian Aloise. But did not win the top prize, as voters selected Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods for Best Musical Revival.
Speaking of Sondheim, the late composer surprising never won the Best Musical Revival award back-to-back. Beginning in 2002, the composer had an interval of a decade in which at least one of his musicals was nominated for the award each year, but he never managed two victories together.
Those fortuitous years began with Follies in 2001, starring Blythe Danner and Judith Ivey, which lost 42nd Street; Into the Woods in 2002, which won; Gypsy starring Bernadette Peters in 2003, which lost to Nine; Assassins in 2004, which won; Pacific Overtures in 2005, which lost to La Cage aux Folles; Sweeney Todd starring Patti LuPone and Michael Cerveris in 2006, which lost to The Pajama Game; Company with Raúl Esparza in 2007, which won; Gypsy with LuPone as Rose and Sunday in the Park with George in 2008, both of which lost to South Pacific; West Side Story in 2009, which lost to Hair; and A Little Night Music starring Catherine Zeta Jones and Angela Lansbury in 2010, which lost to another revival of La Cage aux Folles.
Following the legendary composer’s passing in 2021, he had another span of acclaimed revivals with which he could have won twice or more, but his victories were similarly interspersed by other productions. Marianne Elliott’s Company starring Katrina Lenk and LuPone won in 2022, but in 2023, productions of Sweeney Todd and Into the Woods lost to Arden’s Parade; Maria Friedman’s Merrily We Roll Along with Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe, and Lindsay Mendez won in 2024, but Gypsy starring Audra McDonald did not claim the trophy in 2025, bested by Webber’s Sunset Blvd.
