The 2026 Tony Award Nominees for Best Play Revival Could Be Most Prestigious in History
David Buchanan
For the first time in the three-decade history of the Best Play Revival category at the Tony Awards, the nominees could feature three or more winners or finalists of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the most prestigious playwrighting award in American letters.
This Broadway season’s eleven eligible productions include Death of a Salesman and Proof, both Pulitzer Prize-winning dramas, plus Becky Shaw and Marjorie Prime, both finalists for the prize.
The Windowcard currently projects three of these productions to earn nominations, with Death of a Salesman in first position, Marjorie Prime in third, and Becky Shaw in fourth. Although possible, Proof appears the least likely of the quartet to earn a coveted place amongst the nominees after receiving lukewarm reviews. As New York Times critic Helen Shaw noted, “Something about the intervening quarter-century has exposed the weaknesses in Auburn’s play.”
Since 1918, the Pulitzer Prize for Drama has been granted “for a distinguished play by an American author, preferably original in its source and dealing with American life.” In 1983, the Pulitzer committee began announcing a finalist or finalists for the honor alongside its single annual recipient.
Death of a Salesman, the earliest written of these four works, received the Pulitzer for Arthur Miller in 1949; Salesman marked his only citation from the Columbia University committee, even though his plays All My Sons, The Crucible, A View from the Bridge, and The Price have had outsized influence on the American theatre. Similarly, David Auburn received his sole Pulitzer for Proof back in 2001.
The 2009 Pulitzer committee shortlisted Gina Gionfriddo’s Becky Shaw, describing it as a “jarring comedy that examines family and romantic relationships with a lacerating wit while eschewing easy answers and pat resolutions.” Lynn Nottage’s Ruined received the prize.
Most recently, Jordan Harrison’s Marjorie Prime was longlisted in 2016, described by the jury as a “sly and surprising work about technology and artificial intelligence told through images and ideas that resonate.” Stephen Adly Guirgis received the prize that year for Between Riverside and Crazy; Guirgis contends in the Best Play category at the Tony Awards this year for his screen-to-stage adaptation of Dog Day Afternoon.
These four productions will vie for nominations alongside works by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwrights, even though their awarded plays are not in contention this season.
August Wilson, whose Joe Turner’s Come and Gone has been restaged this year by director Debbie Allen, twice received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Fences in 1987 and The Piano Lesson in 1990, in addition to citations as a finalist for Two Trains Running in 1992, Seven Guitars in 1995, and King Hedley II in 2000.
Tracy Letts, in contention this year for the first Broadway production of Bug, earned the 2008 Pulitzer for August: Osage County; he has been shortlisted twice more for Man from Nebraska in 2004 and The Minutes in 2018. He, Gionfriddo, and Harrison will all be eligible for Tony nominations if their plays make the Best Revival shortlist, as these works have never been staged on Broadway before.
Even if only two of these productions earn nominations — an unlikely but conceivable outcome given the size and strength of the field this year — it would mark only the fifth time in the past 32 years that more than one of the nominees was highlighted by the Pulitzer Prize.
The 2012 Tony ceremony featured two Pulitzer winners in Best Play Revival: Death of a Salesman, staged by Mike Nichols to replicate the original production, and Margaret Edson‘s Wit. The latter had its first production off-Broadway in 1998, the year before it won the Pulitzer, and was subsequently considered a revival under the classics rule when it came to Broadway in 2012.
Six years later, Marianne Elliott’s expansive, neon-embellished staging of Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer winning Angels in America — with its two halves Millennium Approaches and Perestroika playing in repertory — won Best Play Revival. At the time of the ceremony, the production set a Tony Awards record for the most nominations for a play in the honor’s history with 11 nominations. Edward Albee’s Pulitzer winner Three Tall Women received a nomination in the category as well.
In 2022, the first full Broadway season following the coronavirus pandemic closure of theaters, two plays recognized by the Pulitzer jury competed for Best Play Revival: Richard Greenberg’s 2003 finalist Take Me Out — which won the Tony — and Paula Vogel’s 1998 winner How I Learned to Drive, which starred three of the original cast members from the off-Broadway production 25 years earlier: Mary-Louise Parker, David Morse, and Johanna Day.
Last year’s roster boasted another winner and finalist: Kenny Leon’s staging of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, which received the Pulitzer back in 1938, and David Henry Hwang’s 2008 finalist Yellow Face, staged for the first time on Broadway.
From the current field, Death of a Salesman‘s potential Tony victory would indubitably be the most historic. It already holds the record for the most victories in the Best Play Revival category with three, and it could extend that title with a fourth.
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