‘Cats: The Jellicle Ball’ & ‘John Proctor is the Villain’ Take Top Honors at GALECA’s Third Annual Dorian Theater Awards

New York, N.Y. (June 3, 2025): GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics’ kicked off Pride Month by giving John Proctor is the Villain and Cats: The Jellicle Ball top honors in the group’s third annual Dorian Theater Awards. Both productions won three awards each, making them the most awarded shows of the year. The Dorian Theater Awards, decided on by GALECA’s theater wing, honor the best of Broadway and Off-Broadway, mainstream to LGBTQ+, for the 2024-2025 season.

Kimberly Bellflower’s new play John Proctor is the Villain earned three Dorian Theater Awards, more than any other Broadway production. The drama, in which contemporary high schoolers recontextualize Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, was awarded prizes for Outstanding Broadway Play, Outstanding Featured Performance in a Broadway Play for Fina Strazza, and Outstanding Broadway Ensemble.

In other Broadway categories, Jonthan Spector’s Eureka Day picked up the Outstanding Broadway Play Revival prize, Maybe Happy Ending was awarded with Outstanding Broadway Musical, and Sunset Blvd. won Outstanding Broadway Musical Revival.

Voters rewarded a different musical revival in Outstanding Lead Performance in a Broadway Musical, handing that award to Audra McDonald for her portrayal of Momma Rose in Gypsy. These two acclaimed revivals pulled off a tie victory for The Broadway Showstopper Award. This category recognizes standout production numbers and scenes. Voters were equally enamored with the roaming, outdoor rendition of “Sunset Boulevard” as sung by Tom Francis, and McDonald’s towering rendition of the Gypsy finale, “Rose’s Turn.”

The musical adaptation of Death Becomes Her, which was the most nominated production of the year, won the award for Outstanding LGBTQ Broadway production. The musical features Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard as camp queer icons Madeline Ashton and Helen Sharp.

The theater wing honored two solo performances within their acting categories. Sarah Snook won Outstanding Lead Performances in a Broadway Play for tackling 26 different roles in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. Andrew Scott won Outstanding Lead Performer in an Off-Broadway Production for his one-man adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, simply titled Vanya.

Cats: The Jellicle Ball dominated the Off-Broadway categories. This radical reinvention of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical set the story in the world of ballroom. It won three Dorian Theater Awards, including Outstanding Off-Broadway production, Outstanding LGBTQ Off-Broadway Production, and Outstanding Featured Performance in an Off-Broadway production for André De Shields. De Shields was also awarded GALECA’s LGBTQ Theater Trailblazer Award, a distinction which celebrates an individual’s lifelong commitment to creating art that inspires empathy, truth and equity.

The group’s other special prize, the LGBTQ Theater Artist of the Season award, was bestowed to two people due to a tie in voting: Jonathan Groff and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. Groff currently stars as Bobby Darin in the hit bio-musical Just in Time (for which he received a Dorian Award nomination). Jacobs-Jenkins is the playwright of the Pulitzer Prize winning Broadway play  Purpose.

“This Pride month, I’m feeling extra proud of the queer journalists of our theater wing, who have uplifted delightfully bold work with this year’s awards,” said GALECA theater wing co-chair Sam Eckmann. “Revivals like Cats: The Jellicle Ball and Sunset Blvd. dared to excavate well-worn material to find new meanings. New work like Maybe Happy Ending and John Proctor is the Villain reached into our souls with a striking sense of poignancy. A hearty congratulations to all of this year’s winners.”

Below is the complete list of winners for the 2025 Dorian Theater Awards:

Death Becomes Her

Dead Outlaw

Just in Time

 Maybe Happy Ending

Operation Mincemeat

Real Women Have Curves

English

The Hills of California

 John Proctor is the Villain

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Purpose

Floyd Collins

Gypsy

Pirates! The Penzance Musical

 Sunset Blvd.

 Eureka Day

Our Town

Romeo + Juliet

Yellow Face

Cult of Love

 Death Becomes Her

Purpose

Redwood

SMASH

Darren Criss, Maybe Happy Ending

Andrew Durand, Dead Outlaw

Tom Francis, Sunset Blvd.

Jonathan Groff, Just in Time

Megan Hilty, Death Becomes Her

 Audra McDonald, Gypsy

Jasmine Amy Rogers, BOOP! The Musical

Nicole Scherzinger, Sunset Blvd.

Helen J. Shen, Maybe Happy Ending

Jennifer Simard, Death Becomes Her

Kit Connor, Romeo + Juliet

Laura Donnelly, The Hills of California

Mia Farrow, The Roommate

Daniel Dae Kim, Yellow Face

Sydney Lemmon, JOB

Louis McCartney, Stranger Things: The First Shadow

Jon Michael Hill, Purpose

LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Purpose

Sadie Sink, John Proctor is the Villain

 Sarah Snook, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Natalie Venetia Belcon, Buena Vista Social Club

Jeb Brown, Dead Outlaw

Gracie Lawrence, Just in Time

Justina Machado, Real Women Have Curves

 Jak Malone, Operation Mincemeat

Jinkx Monsoon, Pirates! The Penzance Musical

Lea Salonga, Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends

Christopher Sieber, Death Becomes Her

Taylor Trensch, Floyd Collins

David Thaxton, Sunset Blvd.

Michael Urie, Once Upon a Mattress

Joy Woods, Gypsy

Alana Arenas, Purpose

Tala Ashe, English

Molly Bernard, Cult of Love

Jessica Hecht, Eureka Day

Francis Jue, Yellow Face

Marjan Neshat, English

Bob Odenkirk, Glengarry Glen Ross

Zachary Quinto, Cult of Love

 Fina Strazza, John Proctor is the Villain

Amalia Yoo, John Proctor is the Villain

Kara Young, Purpose

Cult of Love

Death Becomes Her

 John Proctor is the Villain

– Sadie Sink, Nihar Duvvuri, Gabriel Ebert, Molly Griggs, Maggie Kuntz, Hagan Oliveras, Morgan Scott, Fina Strazza, Amalia Yoo

Real Women Have Curves

Sunset Blvd.

— To a standout production number or scene

Death Becomes Her – “For the Gaze”

 Gypsy – “Rose’s Turn” (TIE)

John Proctor Is the Villain – “Green Light”

Maybe Happy Ending – “Chasing Fireflies”

 Sunset Blvd. – “Sunset Boulevard” (TIE)

 Cats: The Jellicle Ball

Grangeville

Liberation

Vanya

Wine in the Wilderness

 Cats: The Jellicle Ball

DRAG: The Musical

Grangeville

The Fires

We Had a World

Patsy Ferran, A Streetcar Named Desire

Susannah Flood, Liberation

Brandon Flynn, Kowalski

Joanna Gleason, We Had a World

Marla Mindelle, The Big Gay Jamboree

Paul Mescal, A Streetcar Named Desire

 Andrew Scott, Vanya

Paul Sparks, Grangeville

Alaska Thunderfuck, DRAG: The Musical

Olivia Washington, Wine in the Wilderness

Betsy Aidem, Liberation

Billy Crudup, Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts

 André De Shields, Cats: The Jellicle Ball

Drew Elhamalawy, We Live in Cairo

Sydney James Harcourt, Cats: The Jellicle Ball

Jujubee, DRAG: The Musical

Ahmad Kamal, SUMO

Julia Lester, All Nighter

Paris Nix, The Big Gay Jamboree

Jeanine Serralles, We Had a World

Kyra Sedgwick, All of Me

“Tempress” Chastity Moore, Cats: The Jellicle Ball

Jenny Lee Stern, Forbidden Broadway: Merrily We Stole A Song

Jason Veasey, The Fires

Natalie Walker, The Big Gay Jamboree

Michael Arden

Tommy Dorfman

 Jonathan Groff (TIE)

 Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (TIE)

Jinkx Monsoon

— For a lifelong commitment to creating art that inspires empathy, truth and equity

 André De Shields

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins

Jinkx Monsoon

Andrew Scott

Paul Tazewell

George C. Wolfe

Productions by Number of Wins

Cats: The Jellicle Ball – 3

John Proctor is the Villain – 3

Gypsy – 2

Sunset Blvd. – 2

Death Becomes Her – 1

Eureka Day – 1

Maybe Happy Ending – 1

Operation Mincemeat – 1

The Picture of Dorian Gray – 1

Vanya – 1

About GALECA

GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics and its Dorian Awards honor the best in film, television and, under its theater wing, Broadway and Off-Broadway. More than 500 members strong, GALECA reminds society that the world values the informed Q+ eye on everything entertainment. A nonprofit organization, GALECA also advocates for better pay, access and respect for entertainment journalists, especially the underrepresented. Follow us @DorianAwards on social media, and find more information about who we are and what we do at GALECA.org.

GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment journalists is a core member of CGEM: Critics Groups for Equality in Media, an alliance of underrepresented entertainment journalists organizations.