The 13 Hottest Onstage Hotties of 2013: The Gents

Alex Timbers
The thing about putting Alex Timbers on this list — on any list, really — is that it doesn’t make much sense, given Alex’s acute duel tendencies toward beauty and genius, to put any one else on the list. “Alex Timbers and Go Home” is often, for us, the bleating, chase-light-fringed headline of our lives and our hearts. But let’s try to break this down. First, the genius. Because, you know, this is a man who made a piece of experiential theater about Imelda Marcos, matched the wallpaper in a Broadway show to one he saw in Trainspotting, included a Mr. Big song in Shakespeare, directed Pee-Wee Herman, workshopped the Muppets, and wrote the line, “So is the Spaniards.” And if your head hasn’t exploded yet from all that, let’s also remind you that he is tall and willowy as a birch in the breeze, and has the hair of a classical god only not in stone, because HE IS REAL. Go kill yourself already, because Alex Timbers lives and he cannot let you forget it and neither can we.

Billy Porter
He won a Tony for his portrayal of Lola — drag queen, inspiration and all around-badass –in Kinky Boots, so clearly Mr. Porter’s sheer brilliance has not gone unrecognized this year. But jesu. Can we all please just take one more second here, as the year draws to a close, to appreciate how damn handsome this man is? With those dimples, and those perfectly drawn lips, and the badass nerd glasses, AND THAT SMILE, we are just constantly wishing we had a Billy Porter of our own to light up the rooms we enter every day. What. A. Stud.

Stark Sands
You’ve seen him in his underwear, but that wasn’t even the clincher. The thing that made you — and us — love Stark Sands forever wasn’t his aw-shucks way with basically everything, or his cute British wife who he clearly adores, or his wonky faux Kinky Boots accent, or his surprising quickness in stilettos, or the fact that he sometimes looks like he’s 14-years-old. The thing about Tony Nominee Stark Sands is that it’s all in the eyes, baby. If they are the windows to the soul, Stark’s soul looks like kittens and butterflies floating on a cloud of dreamy blue unicorns. Find the vein, girls. We are addicted. Which is too bad because our next fix, and many more after that, might just have to come in a movie theater and not on Broadway…

Tom Sturridge
Here’s how we know that we love, and I mean really love, Tom Sturridge: He’s done a lot of extremely dumb shit and we don’t even care. Telling Pat Healy how to do and not do his job? No worries, Tomster! Thanks for the helpful hints! Wearing the worst hat in all human history in the most pretentious, most airbrushed Burberry ads we’ve ever seen? Get it, Tom. Hope you got lots of free cologne samples. Because here’s the clincher: Tom Fucking Sturridge, Tony Nominee, is beautiful and talented. And just like no one cares that Giselle Buncheon is basically a really tall moron, The Craptacular does not care that Tom Sturridge makes occasional bad decisions about his life. Don’t we all, Tom. Don’t we all.

Billy Magnussen
Mr. Magnussen has had a hell of a year. Not only was the the hottest body on Broadway outside of the cast of Pippin, but Magnussen scored him a Tony Nomination for his performance as Spike in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, and then rolled right on into the role of Rapunzel’s Prince in the much-anticipated, Meryl-Streep-led film adaptation of Into the Woods. But out favorite thing about Billy? The fact that he’s genuinely a pretty cool, pretty kind dude. Okay. That’s not entirely true. We love his abs and kind of want to lick honey off them like… several times, but really, his niceness is important, too! We swear! Really! We do!

Orion Griffiths
He looks like Ben Walker — if you bonked him on the head real hard so he shrank a bit in height but increased many inches in muscle-bound girth — which you know we love. Plus, this Pippin stud can bend his body into all kinds of interesting positions, which you know we’d love in bed. So really, what is there not to adore about this beautiful specimen of a man? We’d wager nothing.

Colin Donnell
Maybe it’s the beautiful baby blues Colin calls eyes, or the tattoos that peeked out of his wife beater, or the fact that no one outside of David Beckham has ever looked that good in a pair of wet Adidas Track pants and Sambas, but before the midway point of Love’s Labour’s Lost, we were eating out of Colin–err, Berowne’s hands. Then the boyband number — WITH THE KEYCHANGE JOKE — happened and it was all we could do to stay in our seats at the Delacourte Theater. Needless to say we have some positive feels about Mr. Donnell. Especially in our lady parts. And if he’s not on Broadway again soon, we’re going to start lighting important things on fire. Like the Empire State Building, so….

Zachary Levi
Broadway has no shortage of star castings, sure. But few of them had our friends and readers as twitter-pated as Zachary Levi’s move to Broadway in First Date and we get it. Oh, do we get it. Tall and unreasonably handsome, but still somehow like… the neighbor you daydreamed about back in your junior high school days, Levi really is like… the vintage Cadillac of swoony Broadway stars. Just a fucking classic. We’ll be honest, though, our favorite sightings of Levi were always at concerts, where it was fun to watch him shake off his First Date character and just hang with fellow Broadway performers and lovers alike. That’s when he seemed the cutest and realest and bestest of all.

Jose Llana
Mr. Smoldering Handsomeness 2013, Jose Llana, is a completely obvious choice here, we know. But it must be said, and said clearly: If you can play a dictator and still make us want to bone you, you are doing everything right with a cherry on top. You’re also doing everything right if you’re hotter at 35 than you were at 25 (check), if you can survive Wonderland basically unscathed (check), and if you are a bestselling recording artist in your native country (check).

Bobby Steggert
You know what’s not to love about Bobby Steggert? NOTHING. He is cute as a button, vaguely pocket-sized, has a smile like sunshine, and has been on the verge of happening for like five years. Join us in celebrating his actual happening, which allows us to include him on this list, and the fact that he’s playing Norbert Leo Butz’s son. Which is like… a kind of virtual lineage of hotness that we can really get behind.

Bryce Pinkham
It’s not just anyone who can make a murderous potential psychopath hot, and Bryce Pinkham has done this not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES on the Broadway, in Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson , Ghost, and now, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. Needless to say, we’re smitten, not in the least because Pinkham also brings a great sense of humor to his work. His role in Gentleman’s Guide is his biggest yet on Broadway, and his absolutely huge performance of “I’ve Decided to Marry You” basically stopped the show the  night we were at the Kerr. We were howling and applauding right along with the best of them. So, if Bryce is ever looking for a new partner in crime… well, we’re always available.

Samuel Barnett
As if his darling British accent weren’t enough to reel us in, Sam Barnett had to go and give one of the most sensitive, nuanced, thoroughly realized performances on Broadway as Viola/Cesario in Twelfth Night. Sitting, rapt, in the dim Belasco Theatre, we were pretty sure Viola’s quiet, longing, hopeful, passionate gazes at Duke Orsino were actually reaching into our chest and tearing our hearts out.  We’ve never felt more understood, or well represented on stage. The fact that the actor giving that performance was a man made those moments all the more mindblowing. The fact that that man is also ridiculously cute and British and funny off-stage, well, we’re clearly smitten for life.

Steven Pasquale
Confession: Lucky has been in love with Steven Pasquale since she was a bespectacled 16-year-old sitting in the balcony of Boston’s Wang Theater and she witnessed that moment when Sargent Christopher Scott took his shirt off for .5 seconds before the blackout. He sang “Why God, Why?” She sort of remembers. He screamed, “Hhhhnnnnnnnnooooooooo!” — just like Melchior — as the curtain fell. Yeah, she vaguely recalls. But it was that instant of shirtlessness that sent her into the next decade watching every episode of that fireman show and skipping every damn track on A Man of No Importance except “On the Streets of Dublin.” Because the power of Pasquale and his pectoral muscles were basically unstoppable and reverberated across the generations, right up to the moment when he starred in Far From Heaven and shattered her heart to bits. It’s been a long, sweet affair. And if The Bridges of Madison County works out, it’s going to last a while longer.

Photos, from top: Boston Globe; Jason Szenes; Gettty; Unknown Headshot; Unknown; Matthew Murphy; Joan Marcus; Unknown; Unknown Headshot; Unknown Headshot; Unknown Headshot; NYTimes Video Still; NBC.