• The Tony Awards, honoring the best of Broadway, begin at 8 p.m. Eastern Time on CBS. It will also be broadcast on international channels.
• Among the shows expected to do especially well: “The Band’s Visit,” “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” and a revival of “Angels in America.”
• Bruce Springsteen, who is currently performing on Broadway, is being honored with a special award and will sing. So will the casts of nine musicals now playing.
• Sara Bareilles and Josh Groban are the hosts. Celebrities expected to appear include the nominees Tina Fey, John Leguizamo and Amy Schumer, as well as Mikhail Baryshnikov, Claire Danes, Robert De Niro, Jim Parsons and Kerry Washington.
• The Tony Awards, formally called the Antoinette Perry Awards, are presented by the Broadway League and the American Theater Wing.
Nina Westervelt for The New York Times (left); Aaron Richter for The New York Times
The Middle East is a mess. Not on Broadway.
This was the year of the big brand on Broadway, when Harry Potter, Bruce Springsteen and SpongeBob SquarePants came to town.
But watch for a small musical with little name recognition and no razzle dazzle to triumph over its much better known and better funded competitors.
“The Band’s Visit,” an achingly delicate 90-minute show about an Egyptian police orchestra that for a single night is stranded in an Israeli desert town, is likely to beat out “Mean Girls” and “SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical” — the most nominated shows — for the coveted best new musical prize. (“Frozen” is the fourth nominee.)
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
Also noteworthy: “The Band’s Visit” would be the fifth best new musical in a row to come out of the nonprofit theater world. The show began its life Off Broadway at the Atlantic Theater Company before transferring last fall.
The show, adapted from a 2007 Israeli film, features songs by David Yazbek and a book by Itamar Moses; it was directed by David Cromer, and the lead producer is Orin Wolf.
The boy wizard is a stage star.
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
Harry Potter conquered publishing. He broke box-office records on film. And now he’s off to a strong start on Broadway.
“Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” a magically theatrical two-part drama that is designed as a sequel to the seven books, is expected to win the Tony for best new play.
The play is unlike any nonmusical event that preceded it, as a spectacle and as an investment. And the theater industry, despite some leeriness about creeping commercialism, has embraced it because of the talent brought to the story and the staging.
“Cursed Child” was written by Jack Thorne, based on a story by J.K. Rowling, who wrote the novels; John Tiffany, who directed the play; and Mr. Thorne. The lead producers are Sonia Friedman, Colin Callender and Ms. Rowling.
The play began its life in London, won a boatload of Olivier Awards and is still running there, and the producers are already planning a third production in Melbourne, Australia.
The New York production cost a record-breaking (for a play) $35.5 million to capitalize and tens of millions more to clear out the Lyric Theater (which Cirque du Soleil had been using) and redo it (quite beautifully, by the way).
He’s born to win (without even competing).
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
Bruce Springsteen is getting a special Tony Award just for being Bruce Springsteen.
Well, actually, it’s a little more complicated: He’s being recognized for his ecstatically reviewed and totally sold-out show, “Springsteen on Broadway,” during which he sings stripped-down versions of some of his best-known songs and tells stories from his memoir. The show opened in October and is scheduled to close in December.
Other prizes that were announced before the broadcast: the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber — one of the most successful musical theater writers and producers in history — is getting a lifetime achievement award, as is Chita Rivera, a revered Broadway dancer and actor whose credits include originating the role of Anita in “West Side Story.”
Mr. Lloyd Webber has already won seven Tony Awards, including for “Cats” and “The Phantom of the Opera”; Ms. Rivera has won as a performer in “The Rink” and “Kiss of the Spider Woman.”
And a New York Times photographer, Sara Krulwich, has already become the first journalist recognized with a Tony Honor for Excellence in Theater, for her decades of photographing Broadway shows. Her award was given on Monday.
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