Let’s begin with the biggest question mark of this year’s Tony Awards: Which playwright is going to win the prize for Best Play?

On paper, before the 2024-25 season barely got started, it looked like it would be either Sanaz Toossi for her play “English,” which had won a 2023 Pulitzer Prize, or Jez Butterworth, who was returning to Broadway with his most recent West End hit, “The Hills of California.”

Now, Toossi and Butterworth look the least likely to win, and not because their respective plays have already closed. The Cinderella story of this theater season is Kimberly Belflower and her Broadway debut play, “John Proctor Is the Villain,” which panders to the liberal choir even more than Toossi’s “English.”

Tony voters may feel that it’s enough that Belflower, an educator from Appalac

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