Who will win at the 2024 Tonys, and who should

Will win: “Suffs”

Should win: “Illinoise”

Also nominated: “The Outsiders,” “Hell’s Kitchen,” “Water for Elephants”

A slew of worthy musicals face off for the night’s biggest prize. “Water for Elephants” features awe-inspiring circus artistry and imaginative stage effects. “The Outsiders,” inspired by S.E. Hinton’s coming-of-age classic, will move you to tears with mournful ballads, a wrenching-yet-tender story of alienated teenagers, and a breathtaking, rain-soaked rumble, brought to life in a visceral symphony of movement and sound. Sufjan Stevens’s sweeping 2005 indie-rock opus “Illinoise” serves as a springboard for director-choreographer Justin Peck and writer Jackie Sibblies Drury’s inventive dance-musical hybrid. With no dialogue, the show tells a moving, melancholic narrative about the need to bare one’s soul and to find community, and the result is utterly transcendent. Still, this category is shaping up as a showdown between the Alicia Keys songbook show “Hell’s Kitchen” and “Suffs,” a musical retelling of the women’s suffrage movement. Inspired by Keys’s tumultuous teenage years, “Kitchen” pulsates with explosive dance, soaring songs, and a fraught mother-daughter narrative. But since it lacks an original score, history may have its eyes on “Suffs” instead. Written, composed and starring Vermont native Shaina Taub, the show nods to “Hamilton” in its focus on American political history with a story of young, scrappy, and hungry pioneers like Alice Paul and Ida B. Wells who marched, organized, and fought to grant women the right to vote.

Will win/should win: “Stereophonic”

Also nominated: “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding,” “Mary Jane,” “Mother Play,” and “Prayer for the French Republic”

There are a cache of compelling plays in contention here. Amy Herzog’s “Mary Jane” explores questions of selflessness and faith with a shattering story about a relentlessly upbeat mother caring for a chronically ill child. Wellfleet resident Paula Vogel’s “Mother Play,” inspired by the celebrated playwright’s own family upbringing, is a bracingly funny act of empathy and forgiveness. Joshua Harmon’s ideas-and-arguments packed “Prayer for the French Republic,” a play the Huntington staged in Boston last fall, follows a Parisian Jewish family grappling with rising antisemitism and facing thorny questions about the place they call home. Jocelyn Bioh’s “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” is a funny and moving story about a group of West African immigrants circling the salon chairs to protect one of their own. But David Adjmi’s sprawling “Stereophonic” is the heavy favorite. Set in a recording studio, the play follows a Fleetwood Mac-esque rock band as its members struggle to finish recording their new album, face newfound fame, and navigate deteriorating marriages and the band’s shifting dynamics. Featuring rollicking original songs from Will Butler of Arcade Fire and basking in fly-on-the-wall naturalism, “Stereophonic” is a trenchant exploration of the fraught creative process.

Will win/should win: “Merrily We Roll Along”

Also nominated: “Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club,” “Gutenberg! The Musical!,” and “The Who’s Tommy”

The dark, arresting revival of “Cabaret,” imported from London and presented with immersive in-the-round staging, highlights the creeping horror, the disengaged decadence, and the wrenching heartbreak of the Kander and Ebb classic. But the starry revival of “Merrily,” directed by Maria Friedman in a production that played Boston in 2017 with a different cast, is a sure bet to triumph in this race. Sondheim’s most infamous flop returned to Broadway for the first time since 1981, after 42 years of script alterations, critical reassessment, and a second-act as a cult classic. With a narrative that winds backward from jaded middle age to the limitless possibilities of youth, the show chronicles the curdling of friendships in the wake of dashed dreams and broken hearts. Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe, and Lindsay Mendez create a dynamic trio of old friends who feel like old friends, characters you desperately root for despite knowing what the future holds.

Will win: “Appropriate”

Should win: “Purlie Victorious”

Also nominated: “An Enemy of the People”

Three superb revivals, three timely plays, and three stellar casts make for a difficult choice. Henrik Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People,” in Amy Herzog’s new modern production, is a powerfully resonant tragedy about environmental degradation and a society blind to its complacency. When a whistleblowing doctor and scientist attempts to expose his resort town’s polluted new baths, the residents — worried that revealing the truth could mean economic devastation — turn him into a pariah. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s “Appropriate,” with its dual-meaning title, tells the sardonic story of three siblings grappling with the dark secrets that lie within their late father’s crumbling plantation house and the psychic wounds that have not yet healed. While “Appropriate” is the favorite, the first Broadway revival of Ossie Davis’s frenetic farce “Purlie Victorious” since its premiere in 1961 deserves the award. The romping satire remains as blisteringly funny as it is acidly scathing about the absurdities of racism and white supremacy.

Will win: Maleah Joi Moon, “Hell’s Kitchen”

Should win: Kelli O’Hara, “Days of Wine and Roses”

Also nominated: Maryann Plunkett, “The Notebook”; Gayle Rankin, “Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club”; Eden Espinosa, “Lempicka”

A big shout-out goes to the sublime Maryann Plunkett, the Tony-winning Lowell native who began her acting career in Boston, replaced Bernadette Peters in “Sunday in the Park With George,” and starred in Richard Nelson’s Apple and Gabriel family plays. Despite not getting to sing much in “The Notebook,” Plunkett gives a poignant, wrenching turn as an Alzheimer’s-stricken woman. But this race shapes up as a face-off between veteran O’Hara and newcomer Moon. The latter, in an auspicious stage debut, is the frontrunner for her fiery, swaggering turn, with a touch of vulnerability, as an angsty teen trying to assert her independence to her overprotective mother. But it’s O’Hara, the eight-time Tony nominee who finally won in 2015 for “The King and I,” who deserves to add a second Tony to her shelf, thanks to a high-wire performance — part effervescent charm, part delusional self-destruction — as an unfettered alcoholic whose life spirals into a terrifying abyss.

Will/should win: Jonathan Groff, “Merrily We Roll Along”

Also nominated: Brian d’Arcy James, “Days of Wine and Roses”; Brody Grant, “The Outsiders”; Eddie Redmayne, “Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club”; Dorian Harewood, “The Notebook”

Redmayne, a previous Tony winner who nabbed London’s Olivier Award in 2022 for this production of “Cabaret,” has created a memorably menacing and shape-shifting Emcee. Newcomer Grant combines feral angst with intense vulnerability as the soulful Ponyboy in “The Outsiders,” and Harewood is beautifully affecting as a husband trying to reconnect with his Alzheimer’s-stricken wife. James, who’s never won a Tony despite five nominations, paints an excruciating portrait of a guilt-ridden addict in “Roses.” But the actor is going to have to wait longer to finally capture the gold. That’s because Groff is a slam dunk to pick up his first Tony (after previous nods for “Spring Awakening” and “Hamilton”). As Franklin Shepard, a man who’s sacrificed his friendships on the altar of ambition, Groff gives a multivalent turn — alternately charming, solipsistic, sarcastic, angry, aching, earnest, and regretful — that’s central to the success of the “Merrily” Broadway comeback.

Will/should win: Sarah Paulson, “Appropriate”

Also nominated: Betsy Aidem, “Prayer for the French Republic”; Jessica Lange, “Mother Play”; Rachel McAdams, “Mary Jane”; Amy Ryan, “Doubt”

Aidem is fiery and fraught as a French Jewish woman resisting her family’s desire to leave her beloved country in the wake of antisemitic attacks. In her Broadway debut, McAdams leans into her warm and buoyant persona to play a mother who loses herself but finds dignity and purpose in caring for her ailing child. Lange, who won a Tony in 2016 for “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” delivers a shattering performance as a self-pitying, bitter alcoholic struggling to accept her gay children and disillusioned with life’s hurdles. Ryan is funny and frightening as a stern nun blinded by her certainty. But this starry race has a clear frontrunner in Paulson. In “Appropriate,” she’s ferocious, playing an acid-tongued woman packing up her family’s decaying plantation house, sparring with her siblings, and attempting come to terms with her family’s troubling legacy.

Will win: Leslie Odom Jr., “Purlie Victorious”

Should win: Jeremy Strong, “An Enemy of the People”

Also nominated: Michael Stuhlbarg, “Patriots”; William Jackson Harper, “Uncle Vanya”; Liev Schreiber, “Doubt”

This race will be a proverbial duel between “Hamilton” Tony winner Odom as a charismatic preacher and “Succession” Emmy winner Strong as a whistleblowing town doctor. In “Purlie,” Odom channels his “Hamilton” character Aaron Burr and his coiled anxiety, but also embodies the swaggering schemer’s magnetism and con man’s charm. Strong, who grew up in Jamaica Plain and Sudbury, brings blinkered certainty, barely concealed disdain, and moral certitude to Dr. Thomas Stockman, as he attempts to expose the truth about the town’s polluted spa. Both Stockman and Purlie are truth-tellers. But it’s Odom’s Purlie, a born showman who oozes both fierce desperation and swashbuckling confidence, who will likely earn the actor his second Tony.