

***It’s the most wonderful time of the year.***

**Happy Tony Season everyone!** In the interest of nominations being announced, I figured it’d be fun to rank some of our previous Tony winning PERFORMANCES like we’ve previously done Tony winning musicals. For those of you unfamiliar with these games- you can find links to the 2 previous games I’ve organized for the sub right here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Broadway/s/p6c1o7QpRX

As always, this is an ELIMINATION STYLE game. Comment/upvote the name of the performance you want to knock out. The graphic will be updated daily— rinse and repeat until we have our winner.

With that out of the way- *let’s mix it up a little.* We’re going to play 2 mini versions of the elimination style Best Musical game to determine r/Broadway’s BEST Best Actor/Actress of the 21st century (so far). We’ll start this with Best Actor winners and follow it up with Best Actress. 

**In the interest of keeping this quick— we will eliminate 3 performances a day until 15 remain and then 2 performances a day until there is a final 3. 10 days total.**

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***The rules are quite simple:***

- ***RULE #1:*** *ONE* actor/character name per comment. There’s no way to tally which performance the upvotes on your comment go towards if there’s multiple. ***Votes are tallied by number of upvotes on the top 3 COMMENTS containing a single name/performance, not on the replies and not on duplicate comments. This is to ensure fairness.***


- ***RULE #2:*** Do not comment the name of your fave performance on the list. That is the opposite of how to play.


- ***RULE #3:*** Keep the discussion civil. Please, defend your fave with your whole heart. Just be don’t be condescending or unkind. This is a game to **celebrate** these performers— **not** tear them down. General reddiquette and r/broadway rules apply. This is a game! Let’s have FUN.


- ***RULE #4:*** Please be objective. There is definitely going to be some recency bias, but consider and lasting impression the performance made too.

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***And nominees are:***

1. **Brian Stokes Mitchell** as Fred Graham / Petruchio in *Kiss Me, Kate* (2000)
2. **Nathan Lane** as Max Bialystock in *The Producers* (2001)
3. **John Lithgow** as J.J. Hunsecker in *Sweet Smell of Success* (2002)
4. **Harvey Fierstein** as Edna Turnblad in *Hairspray* (2003)
5. **Hugh Jackman** as Peter Allen in *The Boy from Oz* (2004)
6. **Norbert Leo Butz** as Freddie Benson in *Dirty Rotten Scoundrels* (2005)
7. **John Lloyd Young** as Frankie Valli in *Jersey Boys* (2006)
8. **David Hyde Pierce** as Lieutenant Frank Cioffi in *Curtains* (2007)
9. **Paolo Szot** as Emile De Becque in *South Pacific* (2008)
10. **David Alvarez, Trent Kowalik and Kiril Kulish** as Billy Elliot in *Billy Elliot: The Musical* (2009)
11. **Douglas Hodges** as Albin in *La Cage aux Folles* (2010)
12. **Norbert Leo Butz** as Carl Hanratty in *Catch Me If You Can* (2011)
13. **Steve Kazee** as Guy in *Once* (2012)
14. **Billy Porter** as Lola / Simon in *Kinky Boots* (2013)
15. **Neil Patrick Harris** as Hedwig Schmidt in *Hedwig and the Angry Inch* (2014)
16. **Michael Cerveris** as Bruce Bechdel in *Fun Home* (2015)
17. **Leslie Odom Jr** as Aaron Burr in *Hamilton* (2016)
18. **Ben Platt** as Evan Hansen in *Dear Evan Hansen* (2017)
19. **Tony Shaloub** as Tewqif Zakaria in *The Band’s Visit* (2018)
20. **Santino Fonatana** as Michael Dorsey / Dorothy Michaels in *Tootsie* (2019)
21. **Aaron Tveit** as Christian in *Moulin Rouge!* (2020)
22. **Myles Frost** as Michael Jackson in *MJ* (2022) 
23. **J Harrison Ghee** as Jerry / Daphne in *Some Like It Hot* (2023)
24. **Jonathan Groff** as Franklin Shepard in *Merrily We Roll Along* (2024)



DAY 1: Eliminating every Best Actor performance (of this century) until there’s only one left!