Rachel Dratch earns 2026 Tony nomination for Cats: The Jellicle Ball
Rachel Dratch earned a 2026 Tony nomination for best featured actress in a musical for her turn as the narrator in Cats: The Jellicle Ball. For a Lexington native and Saturday Night Live alum, it puts another Broadway credit on a résumé that already reached the Tony ballot in 2022.
Lexington to Broadway
The nomination arrives for the 79th annual Tony Awards, which honor the best of Broadway. Dratch was previously nominated in 2022 for best featured actress in a play for POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive. This time, the category shift matters: she is being judged for a musical performance, not a play, and for a role in a revival that reimagines Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats in New York’s queer ballroom scene.
New England on the ballot
12 nominations went to Schmigadoon! and 12 more went to The Lost Boys, part of a Tony field with multiple New England connections. Sara Chase earned her first Tony nomination for playing Melissa Gimble in Schmigadoon!, while Ali Louis Bourzgui received a nomination for best featured actor in a musical for David in The Lost Boys.
Ali Louis Bourzgui said last month about The Lost Boys: “It’s its own thing.” The line fits this Tony field well enough. Dratch’s nomination does more than add another name to the list; it keeps Boston-area and New England talent visible in the same awards race as shows that drew double-digit nominations.
Cats: The Jellicle Ball also earned a nomination for best revival of a musical, which puts Dratch in a production competing on both individual and show-level strength. That gives voters a clean signal: the role and the revival are being treated as part of the same Broadway conversation, not as a side note attached to a familiar title.
