This Season’s Best Theatre Has Been Decided by Queer Critics!
GALECA, also known as The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics, has kicked off Pride Month by revealing which shows and artists are the year’s most outstanding on and off Broadway.
The Dorian Theater Awards, decided on by GALECA’s theater wing of thirty-plus qualified members, honor the best of Broadway and Off-Broadway, mainstream to more marginal, for the 2024-2025 season—all through a LGBTQ+ lens.
This season, the esteemed LGBTQ+ critics, who hold a range of roles in currents arts and entertainment media, publishing and education, deliberated over these past months to give Broadway’s John Proctor is the Villain and off-Broadway’s Cats: The Jellicle Ball top honors in the third annual Dorian Theater Awards.
Kimberly Bellflower’s John Proctor is the Villain earned three Dorian Theater Awards, more than any other Broadway production: Outstanding Broadway Play, Outstanding Featured Performance in a Broadway Play for Fina Strazza, and Outstanding Broadway Ensemble. The drama, featuring Sadie Sink, critiques the canonical portrayal of John Proctor as a hero in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. It follows a group of high school students in rural Georgia in 2018 who, while studying the classic American text, discover a devastating parallel that inspires their own rebellion, against the background of the #MeToo era. Themes of representation and “witch hunts” are especially relevant once more.
In other Broadway categories, Jonathan Spector’s Eureka Day picked up Outstanding Broadway Play Revival, while Maybe Happy Ending was awarded Outstanding Broadway Musical, and Sunset Blvd. took out Outstanding Broadway Musical Revival.
Audra McDonald’s portrayal of Momma Rose in Gypsy received Outstanding Lead Performance in a Broadway Musical; and McDonald’s towering rendition of the Gypsy finale, “Rose’s Turn” received the Broadway Showstopper Award, tying with the roving, outdoor rendition of “Sunset Boulevard” sung by Tom Francis.
Death Becomes Her, a campy delight starring Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard—the most Dorian-nominated production of the year—won the award for Outstanding LGBTQ Broadway production.
Virtuoso solo performances were celebrated this season. Sarah Snook won Outstanding Lead Performance in a Broadway Play for tackling 26 gender-bending roles in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. Andrew Scott won Outstanding Lead Performer in an Off-Broadway Production for his one-man adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, simply titled Vanya.
Cats: The Jellicle Ball dominated the Off-Broadway categories. This radical reinvention of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical set the story in the world of ballroom. It won three Dorian Theater Awards, including Outstanding Off-Broadway production, Outstanding LGBTQ Off-Broadway Production, and Outstanding Featured Performance in an Off-Broadway production for André De Shields. De Shields was also awarded GALECA’s LGBTQ Theater Trailblazer Award, a distinction which celebrates an individual’s lifelong commitment to creating art that inspires empathy, truth and equity.
LGBTQ Theater Artist of the Season was a tie between Jonathan Groff and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. Groff currently stars as Bobby Darin in the hit bio-musical Just in Time (for which he received a Dorian Award nomination). Jacobs-Jenkins is the playwright of the Pulitzer Prize winning Broadway play Purpose.
“This Pride month, I’m feeling extra proud of the queer journalists of our theater wing, who have uplifted delightfully bold work with this year’s awards,” said GALECA theater wing co-chair Sam Eckmann.
“Revivals like Cats: The Jellicle Ball and Sunset Blvd. dared to excavate well-worn material to find new meanings. New work like Maybe Happy Ending and John Proctor is the Villain reached into our souls with a striking sense of poignancy. A hearty congratulations to all of this year’s winners.”
Complete list of winners for the 2025 Dorian Theater Awards
Outstanding Broadway Musical
Death Becomes Her
Dead Outlaw
Just in Time
Maybe Happy Ending
Operation Mincemeat
Real Women Have Curves
Outstanding Broadway Play
English
The Hills of California
John Proctor is the Villain
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Purpose
Outstanding Broadway Musical Revival
Floyd Collins
Gypsy
Pirates! The Penzance Musical
Sunset Blvd.
Outstanding Broadway Play Revival
Eureka Day
Our Town
Romeo + Juliet
Yellow Face
Outstanding LGBTQ Broadway Production
Cult of Love
Death Becomes Her
Purpose
Redwood
SMASH
Outstanding Lead Performance in a Broadway Musical
Darren Criss, Maybe Happy Ending
Andrew Durand, Dead Outlaw
Tom Francis, Sunset Blvd.
Jonathan Groff, Just in Time
Megan Hilty, Death Becomes Her
Audra McDonald, Gypsy
Jasmine Amy Rogers, BOOP! The Musical
Nicole Scherzinger, Sunset Blvd.
Helen J. Shen, Maybe Happy Ending
Jennifer Simard, Death Becomes Her
Outstanding Lead Performance in a Broadway Play
Kit Connor, Romeo + Juliet
Laura Donnelly, The Hills of California
Mia Farrow, The Roommate
Daniel Dae Kim, Yellow Face
Sydney Lemmon, JOB
Louis McCartney, Stranger Things: The First Shadow
Jon Michael Hill, Purpose
LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Purpose
Sadie Sink, John Proctor is the Villain
Sarah Snook, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Outstanding Featured Performance in a Broadway Musical
Natalie Venetia Belcon, Buena Vista Social Club
Jeb Brown, Dead Outlaw
Gracie Lawrence, Just in Time
Justina Machado, Real Women Have Curves
Jak Malone, Operation Mincemeat
Jinkx Monsoon, Pirates! The Penzance Musical
Lea Salonga, Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends
Christopher Sieber, Death Becomes Her
Taylor Trensch, Floyd Collins
David Thaxton, Sunset Blvd.
Michael Urie, Once Upon a Mattress
Joy Woods, Gypsy
Outstanding Featured Performance in a Broadway Play
Alana Arenas, Purpose
Tala Ashe, English
Molly Bernard, Cult of Love
Jessica Hecht, Eureka Day
Francis Jue, Yellow Face
Marjan Neshat, English
Bob Odenkirk, Glengarry Glen Ross
Zachary Quinto, Cult of Love
Fina Strazza, John Proctor is the Villain
Amalia Yoo, John Proctor is the Villain
Kara Young, Purpose
Outstanding Broadway Ensemble
Cult of Love
Death Becomes Her
John Proctor is the Villain
– Sadie Sink, Nihar Duvvuri, Gabriel Ebert, Molly Griggs, Maggie Kuntz, Hagan Oliveras, Morgan Scott, Fina Strazza, Amalia Yoo
Real Women Have Curves
Sunset Blvd.
The Broadway Showstopper Award
— To a standout production number or scene
Death Becomes Her – “For the Gaze”
Gypsy – “Rose’s Turn” (TIE)
John Proctor Is the Villain – “Green Light”
Maybe Happy Ending – “Chasing Fireflies”
Sunset Blvd. – “Sunset Boulevard” (TIE)
Outstanding Off-Broadway Production
Cats: The Jellicle Ball
Grangeville
Liberation
Vanya
Wine in the Wilderness
Outstanding LGBTQ Off-Broadway Production
Cats: The Jellicle Ball
DRAG: The Musical
Grangeville
The Fires
We Had a World
Outstanding Lead Performance in an Off-Broadway Production
Patsy Ferran, A Streetcar Named Desire
Susannah Flood, Liberation
Brandon Flynn, Kowalski
Joanna Gleason, We Had a World
Marla Mindelle, The Big Gay Jamboree
Paul Mescal, A Streetcar Named Desire
Andrew Scott, Vanya
Paul Sparks, Grangeville
Alaska Thunderfuck, DRAG: The Musical
Olivia Washington, Wine in the Wilderness
Outstanding Featured Performance in an Off-Broadway Production
Betsy Aidem, Liberation
Billy Crudup, Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts
André De Shields, Cats: The Jellicle Ball
Drew Elhamalawy, We Live in Cairo
Sydney James Harcourt, Cats: The Jellicle Ball
Jujubee, DRAG: The Musical
Ahmad Kamal, SUMO
Julia Lester, All Nighter
Paris Nix, The Big Gay Jamboree
Jeanine Serralles, We Had a World
Kyra Sedgwick, All of Me
“Tempress” Chastity Moore, Cats: The Jellicle Ball
Jenny Lee Stern, Forbidden Broadway: Merrily We Stole A Song
Jason Veasey, The Fires
Natalie Walker, The Big Gay Jamboree
LGBTQ Theater Artist of the Season
Jonathan Groff (TIE)
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (TIE)
LGBTQ Theater Trailblazer
— For a lifelong commitment to creating art that inspires empathy, truth and equity
André De Shields
Productions by Number of Wins
Cats: The Jellicle Ball – 3
John Proctor is the Villain – 3
Gypsy – 2
Sunset Blvd. – 2
Death Becomes Her – 1
Eureka Day – 1
Maybe Happy Ending – 1
Operation Mincemeat – 1
The Picture of Dorian Gray – 1
Vanya – 1
About GALECA
GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics and its Dorian Awards honor the best in film, television and, under its theater wing, Broadway and Off-Broadway. More than 500 members strong, GALECA reminds society that the world values the informed Q+ eye on everything entertainment. A nonprofit organization, GALECA also advocates for better pay, access and respect for entertainment journalists, especially the underrepresented. Follow us @DorianAwards on social media, and find more information about who we are and what we do at GALECA.org.
