JUNE 3, 2026

Hello, Stage Whisperers, 

We’re all spending this week on tenterhooks to see what happens at the Tonys on Sunday night — we’ll send out our final predictions for the awards in a bonus issue on Friday — and, more to the point, to see how exactly P!nk is going to hook herself up to the rigging at Radio City Music Hall and fly around. (Maybe she’ll use tenterhooks!) The exclamatorily named singer just gave an interview with Variety in which she promised that “there will be stunts — and not just for me” (put Betsy Aidem in a harness!), that comedian Amber Ruffin is helping write her Tonys script, and that the show will kick off with 170 people onstage with her in “a seven-and-a-half-minute opener that my buddies Benj and Justin wrote.” (Pasek and Paul, for those who are not on a first-name basis.) Population-wise, already impressive. Personally, I think the number should also incorporate the parody song about being a gay ally she did for the movie Popstar in honor of Pride Month, maybe as a segue into the song from The Lost Boys about superheroes and rainbows. 

Jackson McHenry
Critic, Vulture

The latest grosses are here! This week,  Jason P. Frank, Jackson McHenry, and Zach Schiffman discuss.

ZACH SCHIFFMAN: Celebrity Autobiography up to $21 average ticket! Round of applause for them, seriously!!! 

JASON P. FRANK: I’m so sorry, the Celebrity Autobiography grosses are so funny. "26" percent.

ZACH: Celebrity Autobiography is like when you are on a plane and you randomly get the whole row to yourself. They should do moveable armrests so you can lie down.

JACKSON MCHENRY: In better news, all the Salesman praise and press has pushed them up to a new high of $1.8 million. Over 100 percent capacity at the Winter Garden, wild. 

ZACH: This bodes well for season four of The Gilded Age.

JACKSON: I wonder if anyone who has gone knows that Laurie Metcalf is also in the Netflix show Big Mistakes that seems to only exist to our co-workers in TV Slack.

JASON: Jamie Lloyd will have a lot to live up to next spring at the Winter Garden.

JACKSON: Yeah, no pressure on his Evita or this fall’s Much Ado About Nothing.

JASON: Stranger Things has returned to the upside down officially, it appears. And with no more seasons of its flagship show coming, it does feel like that expensive production will be gone relatively soon.

JACKSON: Maybe they will do the Cursed Child thing of trying to get a star of the show to be in it — never mind, that would make no sense given it is a prequel. But who cares, nobody's ever the right age in the Stranger Things universe.

JASON: Millie Bobby Brown! Is! Young Hopper!

JACKSON: Every Brilliant Thing experienced the steep post-Radcliffe dropoff of more than $1.1 million, though people still paid $1.1. million to see Mariska Hargitay. There are almost no box-office draws in the theater like the two Merrily boys.

JASON: Everybody loved that clip where they talked about how wet Groff gets.

JACKSON: I just love that the agreed-upon Every Brilliant Thing dress code is jeans and an oversize blue tee. “What's the most normie outfit we can make every celebrity wear?"

By Jason P. Frank

Photo: Joan Marcus

The best sight gag of this theater season is a wig. Fallen Angels follows two women, Julia (Kelli O’Hara) and Jane (Rose Byrne), who have a ridiculous drunken night together. When Jane reemerges the next morning, her hair is completely out of whack with a tuft sticking up and the whole mane completely bedraggled. It sends the audience into fits of hysterics that stop the show for literal minutes each night.

For wig designers David Brown and Victoria Tinsman, it’s clearly Tony-worthy work. Unfortunately for them, there is no competitive Tony category for wig designers. We chatted with Brown and Tinsman about Fallen Angels, that beloved wig, and how it feels to go chronically unrecognized.

What is the research process like for a show like Fallen Angels?

David Brown: A lot of my research is from photography from the period. I have a large library of yearbooks which go back to before the turn of the century. They give you the real person. It tells you what an athlete looks like at that time. It tells you what an academic looks like. It tells you what the teachers look like. Jeff wanted to push this production more into the ’30s with a modern feel to it. The truth is, if we went back and we honestly literally represented the late ’20s, the modern audience would be like, That is ugly. But it’s true. 

For people who maybe are not that knowledgeable about wigs, can you give me some guidelines for what makes a good wig?

Victoria Tinsman: The best thing about a good wig is if the audience isn’t looking at the wig. They shouldn’t really be like, “Wow, that’s a great wig.” I was talking with the ushers at the theater and some of them were like, “Kelli’s wig is so gorgeous,” but then they thought Rose’s was her real hair. I'm like, “Okay, good.” I don’t even correct them and tell them it’s a wig, because they don’t need to know that.

The moment that Rose walks in with her messed-up wig is one of the great sight gags of the year. How did that develop?

V.T.: We knew going into it that the wigs would go through a progression — that as the show went on, they’re getting more and more intoxicated and a little more silly, and their wigs were going to start evolving. We didn’t anticipate that they would evolve as much as they did, but it was a collaborative effort with a lot of people involved to get it where it is now. I don’t think it said in the script, “She comes in with crazy hair.” It stemmed from Scott being like, “We think her wig needs to be messy.” Now, our hair supervisor, Richard Orton, is back there helping Rose achieve this look every night. We kept seeing it and saying, “It needs to be bigger.” It landed where it is now and it seems to be appreciated by all of the audience. 

D.B.: We knew things had to get messy. It really has become a huge topic of conversation. I get people all the time reaching out to me about that and they’re like, “I love that second wig.” And I’m like, “It’s the same wig.” 

Wait, sorry. Every night it’s the same Rose Byrne wig being teased?

D.B.: Yes! The bigger thing is what the poor hairdresser has to do to then bring it back down for the curtain call, so she looks like she did earlier in the production.

V.T.: Then it has to be reset for every performance to look smooth and stunning.

The Tonys are coming up, but you guys aren’t nominated, because there is no Tony for wig design. Why do you think that is?

V.T.: We’ve been asking that for years. Why is there no Tony for wigs? The hair alone should be looked at just as much as the lights and costumes. We’ve been trying to petition for it for a while.

D.B.: I have to be kind of vague in what I’m saying, but people are concerned that, if there’s a Tony for hair, then it’s going to cost them more money. However, it also gives you an opportunity to add one more Tony to your haul. Lost Boys is one of my shows. We just got 12 Tony nominations. I’m the only designer that wasn’t able to be included in that, and that sucks. 

Look out for the full interview on Vulture this week.

➼ Subscribers can grab a round of bubbly on us. Thank you, Keith McNally. 

➼ A musical-awards race more pressing than the Tonys — Lin-Manuel Miranda, Cardi B, and Zohran Mamdani’s 2K jingle contest. (Vulture’s staff polling is favoring Allegra.) 

➼ I talked about the Tonys with Joey Sims and Connor Scully on their podcast.

➼ Comedian Matteo Lane is, randomly, the next Billy Flynn.

➼ Dad Don’t Read This is coming back for more Sims playing.

➼ Everyone went to Anna Wintour and her daughter Bee Carrozzini’s annual cake party. If you were there, please tell us what the cakes tasted like.

➼ Are the voices in your head calling? Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Gloria is getting its Broadway premiere. 

➼ It’s a wedding (or vow renewal) a night at the Delacorte Theater.