Logo

With Broadway basking in its best season ever in both attendance and grosses — a whopping $1.3 billion — and the Tonys upon us, it’s time to cut the back-patting with a shot of vinegar.

In other words, it’s time for the second edition of The Post’s Baloney Awards, which celebrate the season’s most memorable flops, missteps and flubs. As we prepare for the Tony lovefest (airing Sunday at 8 p.m. on CBS), let’s spare a fond thought for all those misfit toys that had no chance in hell to make the cut.

  • Biggest Broadway embarrassment

    The flaming disaster “China Doll” was the “Hamilton” of flops — everyone was talking about it (but because it was so bad). A terrible Al Pacino spent chunks of David Mamet’s slipshod play holding one-sided phone conversations. Audiences just hung up and fled in droves at intermission.

  • Best case for Bluetooth

    It’s a four-way tie! Struggling with his “Misery” lines, Bruce Willis got a feed through a discreet earpiece, as did Cicely Tyson and James Earl Jones in “The Gin Game.” Forest Whitaker in “Hughie,” though, went low-tech, requesting prompts from a stagehand hiding in the wings.

  • Worst prop

    The slaves sold at auction in “Amazing Grace,” a musical about the famous spiritual’s genesis, wore plastic chains, which made a laughably tinny rattling noise — not the best way to create a somber mood.

  • Worst French accent

    Daveed Diggs is a crowd favorite in “Hamilton,” but his accent as Lafayette is French by way of Mars — even as comedy, it’s just terrible. Couldn’t Diggs have watched some Pepé Le Pew cartoons for research?

  • Best Vegas schlock

    Thank Michael Flatley for continuing to crank out spectacles like “Lord of the Dance: Dangerous Games,” which was way too long and repetitive but occasionally reached camp-tastic nirvana. Keeping it classy on Broadway!

  • Most unnecessary British import, Part 632

    King Charles III Music Box Theatre

    If it’s British and it involves royals, bring it on, no matter how lame! Last season we traveled back to the 1500s with the interminable, stuffy pageant “Wolf Hall.” This year we flash-forwarded to a future where Prince Charles (Tim Pigott-Smith) finally gets crowned in “King Charles III” — and it was just as boring, albeit shorter by a few hours.

  • Worst speechifying outside a political convention

    While Teller was silent, as usual, his partner in magic, Penn Jillette , had a hard time shutting up in the pair’s “Penn & Teller on Broadway.” And illusions and libertarian broadsides don’t mix, unless you want to make fun disappear.

  • Most delayed gratification

    Sarah Charles Lewis as Winnie Foster in TUCK EVERLASTING on.JPG

    There was a lovely story ballet in the musical “Tuck Everlasting,” but it was at the very end of the show, and you had to wade through lengthy sentimental goop to get to it.

  • Most annoying waste of stage genius

    Linda Lavin is a fabulous actress, but “Our Mother’s Brief Affair” was an embarrassingly lazy vehicle. Playwright Richard Greenberg is lucky Manhattan Theatre Club continues to overlook his diminishing artistic returns.

  • Worst girl-girl chemistry

    Jennifer Hudson in THE COLOR PURPLE Photo by Matthew Murphy.jpg

    While Jennifer Hudson sang beautifully in “The Color Purple,” you never felt like her Shug Avery wanted to get it on with Cynthia Erivo’s Celie.

Comments
anonymous profile image
Powered by RoundtableBuilt on infrastructure designed for real-time media. Learn more at RTB.io.© Roundtable 2026. By using this site you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy