RANKING THE NEARLY 50 TONY-WINNING REGIONAL THEATERS

I have been to all but one of the regional theaters that have won the Tony award since it began awarding regional theaters annually in the 1970s. I have attempted a basically impossible task here, which is to rank all of them. It’s impossible because, first of all, all of them have won the award and are all (I can attest in all but one case) wonderful theaters. Secondly, no one can see all the shows produced by almost 50 theaters sprawled out across this giant country, so a ranking inevitably favors whatever random production one happens to see. Nonetheless, I have cobbled together a basis for ranking, a mix of personal preference (it’s just my opinion and someone else will and should have 50 very different rankings), a rating of the quality and originality of the programming over the years (with admittedly some theaters more closely followed then others over decades) and the theater buildings or settings, with special favor often granted to theaters with a unique mission unduplicated around the country. It is inevitable that I’ve been to some of these theaters many times, and others only once. This year’s winner, The Muny in St. Louis, is not on this list because I will be attending it this summer for the first time. Full disclosure: I am from Chicago, so I’m more familiar in some instances with the five Chicago theaters over a long term. Still, it is in a good faith effort to rank objectively that I pick as the number one regional theater…

1.     Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Chicago, IL
A lot of companies on this list have had plays transfer to Broadway, but Steppenwolf’s transfers tend to be the sort of plays that move simply because of their quality, and not because of their commercial potential. Nonetheless, they prove to be commercially successful because they are so sharp, so original, so bold. When Entertainment Weekly named Tracy Lett’s Pulitzer- and Tony-winning August: Osage County the best play of the first decade of the 2000s, it was merely confirming the obvious. This month, Steppenwolf saw one of its productions win another Pulitzer, in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Purpose. It also launched Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris, which won both the Pulitzer (2011) and the Tony (2012). Also notable are revivals like the Tony-winning production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee starring Letts and Amy Morton.

2.      Signature Theatre Company, New York, NY
Until the Signature Theatre Company won its regional theater award, New York companies were not considered for the award. But the Signature made it necessary to consider New York theaters. One of the best in the country both at commissioning new work, providing time and space to creators to develop new shows, Signature’s plays have won Pulitzer nominations, such as for Jacobs-Jenkins’ Everybody. The 42^nd Street theater is highly attractive, with a lobby that is one of the most comfortable and spacious nationwide, and it’s a cozy place to get coffee and buy a theater script even when one is not seeing a show there. In addition to its own plays, the Signature also serves as host to The New Group, an off-Broadway company that does sharp and original plays by and starring the likes of Wallace Shawn and Ethan Hawke.

3.      American Repertory Theatre, Cambridge, MA
After 40 years down the street from Harvard Square at the comfortable Loeb Drama Center, the ART is moving to a new theater in the Allston neighborhood, to which the Harvard campus is expanding its reach. Harvard’s theater company has been a hub for both innovation, such as the interactive hit Sleep No More, and commercial hits, like the Broadway-bound, Tony-nominated musicals Waitress, Jagged Little Pill and Finding Neverland. Sometimes one wonders whether the world’s best and brightest should be producing such commercial fare, but the level of quality is always very high no matter the genre under the amazing leadership of theater legend Diane Paulus.

4.      Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Berkeley, CA
My first experience at the Berkley Rep was the Broadway tryout of Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart in repertory in Pinter’s No Man’s Land and Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, which is an event anywhere. After that I went on to see Tony Kushner’s little-performed four-hour The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism with a Key to the Scriptures, in its third engagement nationally, on Pride weekend in the Bay Area. I also saw Angels in America with Randy Harrison, the Broadway tryout of the Amelie musical, and several other great shows that kept me coming back. And that’s just what I saw. The Berkeley Rep consistently brings in nationally notable shows almost every year.

5.      Goodman Theatre Company, Chicago, IL
This may be the theater I’ve attended most on the list. The Goodman has sent many plays to Broadway including the recent Good Night Oscar starring Tony winner Sean Hayes in a tour de force that included a dynamic live performance of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” every night. The Goodman’s revival of The Who’s Tommy was also nominated for a Tony. The theater is also known, though, for more adventurous fare like Mary Zimmerman’s Matchbox Magic Flute. Still remembered, as well, are older plays like the Brian Dennehy Death of a Salesman, which won four Tonys including best revival, and Grapes of Wrath, which also won Tonys.  The Goodman building, located in Chicago’s Loop, has not one but two beautiful theater spaces, both of which were memorably used soon after they opened for a simultaneous staging of two plays at once, Alan Ayckburn’s House and Garden, which saw the actors rushing from one room to the next to make their cues in the two shows. 

6.      Williamstown Theatre Festival, Williamstown, MA
Nestled in the middle of nowhere, near the lively Berkshires theater scene, is Williamstown College, where the annually interesting Williamstown Theatre Festival is based. Since its inception the summer festival has drawn major actors, including in the early days Frank Langella and Blythe Danner, and over the years Nathan Lane, Paul Giamatti, Sigourney Weaver, Matthew Broderick, Gwenneth Paltrow, Bradley Cooper, Marissa Tomei, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Renee Fleming, and many others. The festival consistently transfers shows to Broadway and there are always multiple interesting selections to book in the same summer.

7.      Yale Repertory Theatre, New Haven, CT
Of the 90 world premiers at the Yale Repertory Theatre over the decades, an impressive four have taken home Pulitzer Prizes, and 10 productions have won Tony Awards. I saw several shows over the years and always enjoyed the easy train ride up from Grand Central Station on 42^nd Street in Manhattan. Founded in 1966 by Robert Brustein, dean of Yale School of Drama at the time, Yale features lots of new work and often major actors like Paul Giamatti as Hamlet just before I started attending shows there. The theater gave birth to Christopher Durang’s career, as well as many other notable playwrights.

8.      Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, Waterford, CT
“The O’Neill” does not stage full productions of plays, but it is one of the most influential regional theaters in the country. It has won two Tonys, including a special award in 1979 and the Regional Theater Tony in 2010. It has also received a National Medal of Arts from President Obama. What it produces are staged readings and workshops of new plays and musicals, a form of play development the O’Neill is said to have pioneered itself. Dozens of successful plays and musicals have started at its country campus, located near the house where Eugene O’Neill himself grew up and in which he set the play Long Day’s Journey into Night, which is now a museum with docent tours. The year I went to the O’Neill our weekend kicked off with a lecture from theater critic Chris Jones about O’Neill, and Hailey Feiffer’s I’m Gonna Pray For You So Hard got its start. The O’Neill also birthed at least half of August Wilson’s Century Cycle including Fences, The Piano Lesson and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, as well as Jeremy O. Harris’ Slave Play, the musicals Avenue Q and In the Heights, and many other shows.

9.      Paper Mill Playhouse, Milburn, NJ
If you’re a fan of the Broadway musical, Paper Mill Playhouse is one of the most important regional theaters in the country for your tastes. The “State Theater of New Jersey” has launched many musicals that have migrated over the Hudson River to Broadway, as well as other world premieres like Harold & Maude which are notable without the Broadway imprimatur. Shows they’ve launched include Newsies, A Bronx Tale, and one of the Great Gatsby musicals that filled the scene recently. Paper Mill also produces plays, featuring family-friendly fare like Lend Me A Tenor, among many others.

10.   La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, New York, NY
Only the second New York theater to win the award, La Mama ETC on 4^th Street in Manhattan features, as the name implies, experimental new plays including debuts by Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson and Harvey Fierstein, Philip Glass and Julie Taymor. Classified as an off-off-Broadway theater, it used to do tours internationally. I saw two shows there, including one about John F. Kennedy’s support for the arts, which is the sort of thing you can see nowhere else. The other show was a solo appearance by legendary performance artist Karen Finley. The theater, which was founded by a former fashion designer named Ellen Stewart, underwent a major renovation just after the COVID pandemic.

 

11.   Crossroads Theatre, New Brunswick, NJ
A seminal African-American theater, Crossroads was founded on the principle that Black people didn’t need to be cast in white people’s plays so much as they needed their own theaters. Based for decades in downtown New Brunswick near Rutgers University, Crossroads is opening a new home soon that will also be home to performance groups from Rutgers.

12.   Court Theatre, Chicago, IL
I’m biased, having seen more plays here than almost any other theater on the list, but I find the University of Chicago’s resident Court Theatre to be underrated, and as I traveled the country seeing the top regional theaters before Court won the award in 2022, I kept wondering why it hadn’t won it yet. The theater doesn’t transfer any shows to Broadway, but it turns out sharp original takes on the classics and new work with local casts year after year. I prefer its intimate takes on musicals like Porgy and Bess and Caroline or Change to productions in mammoth Broadway houses and look forward each year to its new lineups. The Court recently underwent a leadership change, with artistic director Charlie Newell stepping down after decades, but Newell continues to direct. I just saw his adaptation of the graphic novel Berlin, a timely and original theatrical take on the fall of the Weimar Republic to Hitler between 1928 and 1933.

13.   La Jolla Playhouse, San Diego, CA
The La Jolla Playhouse, located steps from the beach north of San Diego, has been responsible for 36 Broadway transfers, according to Wikipedia. The very comfortable mainstage space lends itself to high quality technical productions, and several Broadway musicals have had their start here, including Matthew Broderick’s How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Summer: The Donna Summer Musical (which is among several productions I’ve seen at La Jolla), and 2025’s Redwood with Idina Menzel. La Jolla also workshopped the first production of Doug Wright’s Pulitzer Prize-winning I Am My Own Wife. Located on the campus of the University of California at San Diego, this is a beautiful place to see good theater.

14.   Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Chicago, IL
I’ve been going to Chicago Shakespeare Theatre since it was located on the Gold Coast, but it now has a beautiful home on Navy Pier with an intimate thrust stage modeled on Stratford-Upon-Avon’s Swan Theatre. This past year CST began transferring in productions from the Royal Shakespeare Company, which produced an excellent Pericles last year, but the local productions are of high quality too. There is also a second space, called The Yard, which houses many musicals and plays that have headed to Broadway afterwards (or ran on Broadway before), including The Notebook and the Sufjan Stevens musical Illinoise.

15.   Shakespeare Theatre Company, Washington DC
Ranked in a virtual tie with the Chicago Shakespeare Company, Washington’s Shakespeare Theatre Company has also imported productions from the Royal Shakespeare Company, including a brilliant Timon of Athens starring Kathryn Hunter that also played the Theatre for a New Audience in Brooklyn, and which I’ve seen on its handsome DVD. That production is by the STC’s artistic director, Simon Godwin, who has also directed some great productions at the Royal National Theatre (such as Hansard starring Alex Jennings and Lindsay Ducan), at which he served as associate director. He also served as associate director of the Royal Court Theatre and associate director at Bristol Old Vic. In addition to Shakespeare productions it features plays by David Ives (who I saw produced there), Tennessee Williams, Noel Coward and many other familiar playwrights. The season is as lively in the summer as in the fall, which is not always true in regional theater. I rank it under Chicago Shakespeare Theatre only because its proscenium theater is not quite as impressive as the two rooms at Chicago Shakes.

16.   Guthrie Theatre, Minneapolis, MN
One of the great regional repertory theaters the country over, the Guthrie originated Tony Kushner’s four-hour The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism with a Key to the Scriptures, for which Kushner was speed-writing pages as the play was being performed. The theater boasts a handsome building designed by French architect Jean Nouvel. The theater was founded by a group of actors who had become disenchanted with Broadway, and decided to open a repertory company doing classic plays. They now alternate classics with new works. The season last year featured their 50^th A Christmas Carol, a production of the Tony-winning Lehman Trilogy, Patrick Page’s All the Devils are Here: Shakespeare’s Villians, and other plays.

17.   Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles, CA
The Mark Taper Forum has been hard to place because it has fallen on hard times. The theater is among the most gorgeous I saw in America, on the brilliantly designed campus of the Centre Theatre Group, nestled between the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion (which once hosted the Oscars and is now home to the LA Opera) and the Ahmanson Theatre (which imports Broadway hits among other large-scale fare), and next to the gorgeous Walt Disney Concert Hall by superstar architect Frank Gehry. After the pandemic, the Taper spent multiple seasons dark, and has yet to announce its 2025-26 season online.

18.   Alliance Theatre, Atlanta, GA
Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre has sent several plays and musicals to Broadway, including the Tony-winning The Color Purple, Elton John’s Tony-winning Aida and Alfred Uhry’s The Last Night of Ballyhoo. I saw the world premiere of the Bull Durham musical there in 2014. The artistic directors of this theater have included Kenny Leon and Susan Booth, the latter of whom went on to replace Tony-winning director Robert Falls at the Goodman Theatre.

19.   Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Ashland, OR
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, which does much more than just Shakespeare, has put up 10 plays each of the last two years in its gorgeous natural surroundings far flung from any other theaters. In the early years, the festival produced only Shakespeare, and it has performed all of the Shakespeare plays multiple times over. More recently, the offerings are significantly more diverse, featuring important playwrights like August Wilson and new plays by relative unknowns. The average playgoer has seen between three and four plays at the festival in a summer for years, and the festival is a financial boon to the area.

20.   South Coast Repertory, Costa Mesa, CA
The South Coast Repertory boasts a new play development program called The Lab@SCR that has birthed notable plays from Richard Greenberg’s Three Days of Rain and The Violet Hour to David Henry Hwang’s Golden Child and Amy Freed’s The Beard of Avon.The theater mounts about eight plays a year in multiple stages, not including a new plays festival.

 

21.   American Conservatory Theatre, San Francisco, CA

22.   Wilma Theatre, Philadelphia, PA

23.   Pasadena Playhouse, Pasadena, CA

24.   Huntington Theatre Company, Boston, MA

25.   Dallas Theatre Center, Dallas, TX

26.   Arena Stage, Washington, DC

27.   Denver Center Theatre Company, Denver, CO

28.   Alley Theatre, Houston, TX

29.   Seattle Repertory Theatre, Seattle, WA

30.   Old Globe Theatre, San Diego, CA

 

31.   Long Wharf Theatre, New Haven, CT

32.   Actors Theatre of Louisville, Louisville, KY

33.   Children’s Theatre Company, Minneapolis, MN

34.   Signature Theatre, Arlington VA

35.   Cleveland Play House, Cleveland, OH

 

36.   Hartford Stage, Hartford, CT

37.   McCarter Theatre, Princeton, NJ

38.   Intiman Playhouse, Seattle, WA

39.   TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, CA

40.   Godspeed Opera House, East Haddom, CT

 

41.   Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Cincinnati, OH

42.   Trinity Repertory Company, Providence, RI

43.   Victory Gardens Theatre, Chicago, IL

44.   Lookingglass Theatre Company, Chicago, IL

45.   San Francisco Mime Troupe, San Francisco, CA

 

The rankings reflect that the Victory Gardens and Lookingglass Theatre of Chicago have spent significant amounts of time closed since the pandemic, and have not rebounded to a full schedule. The San Francisco Mime Troupe does not deserve last place, but it is hard to rank against the other theaters, as it does not aspire to the same kind of quality that most of them do. It’s a cool place doing explicitly political theater in a park in San Francisco, and I thoroughly enjoyed the show I saw there, though it was hard to hear the actors.  

Unfortunately, I never made it to the Utah Shakespeare Festival, Cedar City, UT, which does mostly Shakespeare among other classics like The Importance of Being Earnest and Steel Magnolias. I also failed to make it to the first regional theater to receive a Tony, though that was decades before it became an annual award and was really a different award, in the 1940s. That theater is the Virginia Barter Theatre in Abington, VA. While I’ve never been there I have read a play that had its world premiere there, The Second Mrs. Wilson by Ruth Wolff. It’s one of two plays called The Second Mrs. Wilson staged at theaters on this list that I have read, oddly enough, the other one having been mounted at the Long Wharf Theatre, and written by Joe DiPietro.

Finally, Theatre de la Jeune Lune, Minneapolis, MN, was closed before I began my nationwide tour of the theaters.