Theoretically, there’s a clear division between new works and revivals at the Tony Awards. The Best Musical and Best Play categories are seemingly reserved for works making their Broadway debuts, with Best Revival of a Musical and Best Revival of a Play for those that have been on Broadway before. In actuality, it’s not that simple, due to a rule that our research indicates was introduced in 2002 for the 2002-2003 season.
“Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune” was deemed eligible for the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play that first year. Later, the 2004 Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim’s “Assassins” was eligible for the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical, despite this being the first time it was produced on Broadway. The same goes for the 2013 production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Cinderella,” the 2014 production of John Cameron Mitchell’s “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” and many others. More recently, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ “Appropriate” won the Tony for Best Revival of a Play in 2024, even though the production marked the work’s Broadway debut. Although none of these plays or musicals had ever been on Broadway before these respective productions, these stagings were also not the first major production of the materials. And so all of them were ruled as eligible for Best Revival categories at the Tonys.
This is because of what is commonly called the Tonys’ “classics” rule. As of the 2025-2026 season, this is rule 2(g) in the Tony Awards’ Rules and Regulations document, and reads as follows:
