by Nathaniel R

John McRae & Mihir Kumar starred in "Prince Faggot". Photo © Marc J Franklin

As many readers know a few members of Team Experience belong to GALECA the Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics though most of us vote on the film and television side. I have the privilege of also being a voter in the society's Dorian Theater Awards, which celebrate both Broadway & Off Broadway productions. The nominations were announced this past week for the 2025-2026 theater season which wrapped up recently and will be a closed book once the Tony Awards are announced on June 7th. The Dorian winners will be announced on June 1st. The TV-to-Stage transfer Schmigadoon (9) led the Broadway shows and Prince Faggot (7) was the nomination leader for Off Broadway on the Dorian ballots. The latter is a truly riveting play which I actually went to twice (very rare for me with so much to see!). It had the distinction of landing a nomination in every category for which it was eligible.

From the press release: 

“From the radical reimaging of our world in Prince Faggot, to the tender themes of self-discovery in Schmigadoon!, it has been a wonderful season of queer storytelling on New York stages,” says GALECA’s theater wing co-chair Sam Eckmann. “In addition to the new LGBTQ stories that we fell in love with, we were proud to see previous Dorian Theater Award winners Cats: The Jellicle Ball and Titaníque find new, fabulous life on Broadway. Our stories are connecting with wider audiences and enduring on stages both large and small.”

After the jump let's talk the nominees and how they differ (or don't) from the Tony nominations...

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by Nathaniel R

While I made a real effort to catch all the musicals this season I'm weaker on the plays having seen only 5 of the 18 that opened this past season. Let's talk about the nominees. I'll be sure to mention any film connections to keep the less theater-inclined interested...

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by Nathaniel R

While The Film Experience is about, well, the movies, longtime readers know that I like to throw in a little live theater whenever possible. And these days as with TV and Film, the line between mediums is ever blurry with stage shows making it to screen or TV and vice versa or both unconnected when they are inspired by the same novel. Though I’ve always tried to be a somewhat regular theatergoer, funding and time often refuse to comply. But during the 2025-2026 season I hit the boards a lot and managed to see 100% of the eligible New Musicals and 40% of the revivals (though I fully hope to make that 80% soon). I did less well with plays though I'll try to see something else before the big night.  In short, my opinions hold more weight (with myself) since I caught a lot more of the season. 

Today nominations were announced for the 79th Annual Tony Awards which will be held June 9th in New York City, and broadcast on CBS Paramount+. This year's festivities will be hosted by Grammy winner P!nk so you can bet there will be aerial action given that one of the two nomination leaders is an adaptation of the 1987 vampire movie The Lost Boys (which, a full review later). So let's talk about the musical nominations...

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by Team Experience

LIAM NEESON, HARVEY KEITEL, EDDIE MURPHY, and WILLIAM H MACY are just four of many actors we'd love to see stage an Oscar comeback.

Hello dearest readers. Inspired by Amy Madigan's amazing Oscar comeback we've spent the last month fantasizing about another such occurence. Because our audience is less into actors than actresses, we did a more abbreviated version of the mammoth actress poll / team ranking / reader ranking we recently posted in three parts. Today it's all in one. We polled all of you (readers and our writers together) and while there was much less participation (y'all just love your actresses, don'cha) we still thought the results were interesting. The same rules applied this time around. Namely 1) The actor had to still be alive and 2) over 50 years of age with 3) only one Oscar nomination to date that was 20 or more years ago. The final caveat was that they had to be Oscarless so Honoraries and awards in other categories would disqualify them. Interestingly enough despite the same criteria as the actress poll, there were far fewer men eligible (49 vs 75) indicating that there are less one-and-done Oscar nominations for male thespians. Or that they don't live as long; Both are true!

Maybe because there were fewer eligible contenders for this list, you didn't snub any of them. All 49 eligible men received at least one vote from a reader or team member here. Peter Firth (Equus), Randy Quaid (The Last Detail), and Gary Busey (The Buddy Holly Story) narrowly avoided complete snubs by landing on one ballot each. With the votes spread out over literally all eligible contenders, we're narrowing this to a top 15 (for actresses we did a top 26) as the nearest rivals for dominance (Elliott Gould, Alec Baldwin, and Alan Alda in that order) were quite a bit further back in terms of points /  number of ballots.

YOUR TOP FIFTEEN

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Pt 1 - Team Experience Votes 
Pt 2 - Team Experience Winners 
Pt 3 - AT LONG LAST THE RESULTS OF THE READERS POLL...

WHO SHOULD BE THE NEXT AMY MADIGAN?

ELISABETH SHUE in Leaving Las Vegas (1995). What would it take to get her a comeback role?

We've spent the last couple of weeks bsessing over a question from a reader (thanks, Brian!) and we got so into discussing it at TFE HQ that we asked all of you to vote on the same question. The Team and Readers were unaware of each others vote totals during voting so nobody was influencing anyone. We've poured over the ballots that came in to suss out your passions and determine rankings.  In honor of this new film year, 2026, we'll share the  twenty-six actresses you're collectively rooting hardest for in terms of an Oscar comeback after just one nomination twenty or more years ago. We've included some quotes from your ballots too and hope you enjoy and continue the discussion. After the list, some fun stats. God, we love actresses!

YOUR TOP TWENTY-SIX

just-missed: Lena Olin & Candice Bergen were on as many or more ballots than Elisabeth Shue but weren't as highly ranked on the ballots they did appear on. They almost made it.

And a reader quote I just love to kick things off...

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