John Lithgow is on his 25th Broadway show, playing Roald Dahl in Giant — a turn that has placed him among the frontrunners for best actor in a play at the 79th Tony Awards.
Lithgow’s Dahl is not the sunny storyteller many remember; the role leans into the author’s darker side, and that darker shade of the part is the detail Broadway voters appear to be responding to. The performance in Giant has been put forward as a leading chance to deliver Lithgow a third Tony when the ceremony takes place Sunday, June 7.
The scale of what’s at stake is plain: a veteran actor on his 25th Great White Way production, a role that reframes a familiar name, and a category in which his name is already spoken as a front-runner. The roundtable that convened at PMC’s New York headquarters late in the season gathered six nominees headed to the Tonys; the conversation underscored how much attention this particular acting race has drawn.
Context came quickly at that session. The other performers in the room included Nathan Lane, Joshua Henry, Shoshana Bean, Rose Byrne and Marla Mindelle — all nominees in this Tony season. Lane, a veteran of stage and screen like Lithgow, is receiving career-best notices for his interpretation of Willy Loman in a recent revival of Death of a Salesman, and his work is being discussed as a rival center of gravity in the same voting pool.
That rivalry is the tension that defines Lithgow’s moment. Being a frontrunner no longer reads as a solo lead; Lane’s Loman and Lithgow’s Dahl are being framed as two competing veteran narratives. One performance leans on the uncanny underside of a beloved author, the other on a fresh, lauded take on a canonical American role. Voters will have to choose between different kinds of theatrical authority, and that split makes the category unusually unpredictable.
For audiences and the nominees themselves, the immediate calendar is simple: the 79th Tony Awards are scheduled for Sunday, June 7. For Lithgow, the question that remains is narrow and consequential — can his portrayal of Roald Dahl convert frontrunner talk into a third Tony, or will Lane’s career-best notices for Willy Loman carry the night? The answer will come on June 7, when Broadway’s top acting prize is awarded and one veteran will leave with the season’s defining accolade.
