Who will soar and who will run away in shame?

Last season, Broadway was bombarded by celebs.

It was a Lazy Susan of Oscar winners plopped in even lazier productions. 

Tickets for forgettable-to-“avert your eyes!” plays starring Denzel Washington, Robert Downey, Jr., George Clooney and Kieran Culkin went for as high as $900 a pop.

The nasty habit hasn’t abated this fall, though we’re noticeably starting to move a few rows back at the Academy Awards. In most cases, we’re firmly at the Emmys.

Will these stars onstage mark more box-office triumphs and critical smackdowns?

Who will dart up to the mic stand at June’s Tony Awards, like Sarah Snook from “Succession” did last this summer, and who will slink back home to Malibu in shame on closing night?

Who will fly? And who will flop?

One of the hottest shows opens next week: A revival of “Waiting for Godot” starring Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter. “Bill and Ted’s Aburdist Adventure.”

Sources say John Wick has a strong $10 million advance.

Naturally. He’s the season’s biggest name by far, and tix cost as much as $670 face value. Still, at many performances you can get in for $120. 

One boon is director Jamie Lloyd. His revival of “Sunset Boulevard” just won a Tony. 

One horrifying risk is Jamie Lloyd. His revival of “Romeo and Juliet” in London with “Spider-Man” Tom Holland was poisonous and deservedly mocked.

The “Matrix” star isn’t known for his booming voice. But Lloyd is known for cranking up the volume so famous faces can breathily whisper. No matter how reviews shake out, “Godot” will sell.

A couple A-List projects already happened, for better or worse. 

Jean Smart surely got a mood lift from her fourth Emmy win for “Hacks” last Sunday. 

Because her awful one-woman show “Call is Izzy” at Studio 54 was ripped to shreds by reviewers and played to half-full houses. A Tony nod would be a tall order.

Meanwhile, “Art” with James Corden, Neil Patrick Harris and Bobby Cannavale, which opened last week to a polite response, has an $8 million advance, I’m told. 

The comedy’s OK, but Corden got the strongest notices. The former “Late Late Show” host must be over the moon this week to be the former “Late Late Show” host.

Three legit stage stars are back on the boards — under very different circumstances.

The reliably fantastic Laurie Metcalf plays a cranky aunt in a moving new play by Samuel D. Hunter (“The Whale”) called “Little Bear Ridge Road.” I liked it a lot at Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago.

Kristin Chenoweth leads Stephen Schwartz’s first Broadway musical since “Wicked,” “The Queen of Versailles.” The OG — Original Glinda — stirred up some outrage among theater folks recently when she mourned Charlie Kirk in an Instagram comment.

Much to the chagrin of loudmouths, these social media controversies never affect ticket sales — only publicists’ inboxes. But the show itself might. I don’t know a soul who loved “Versailles,” which is based on the documentary, when it played out of town. 

A source said its advance is $2.5 million. 

Ver-sigh. That’s worrying. Because as the title would imply, it’s not a blackbox chamber piece.

And Lea Michele fans are full of glee that she’s returning in the revival of “Chess.” 

That musical, with catchy pop songs by ABBA’s Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, will be a major test of Michele and co-star Aaron Tveit’s raw appeal. 

The show, a geopolitical love story, was an infamous flop that ran just three weeks in 1988. 

Frank Rich wrote that it had “the theatrical consistency of quicksand” — a phrase that’s conspicuously absent from ads in front of the Imperial Theatre.

Perhaps they’ve finally fixed the notoriously confusing script, and maybe new generations will fall in love with tunes like “One Night in Bangkok” and “I Know Him So Well.” 

Possibly. But “Funny Girl” and “Moulin Rouge,” “Chess” is not.

A note on the Spring: 

Two stars of “The Bear,” Ayo Edebiri and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, are respectively appearing in the plays “Proof” and “Dog Day Afternoon.”

So, in 2024 and 2025, Broadway got the cast of HBO’s “Succession” (Culkin, Snook and Jeremy Strong) and in 2026 it welcomes the ensemble of FX’s “The Bear.”

Prestige TV pileups are a weird model to repeat.

At least we can sleep soundly knowing that every single theater season we’ll always see the cast of “The Gilded Age.”