2018 Tony Awards: Mean Girls and SpongeBob lead the nominations
Two musicals with enormous brand names, “Mean Girls” and “SpongeBob SquarePants,” led the pack of Tony-nominated shows, garnering 12 nods each.
The nominators also showered affection on five critically acclaimed productions: Revivals of “Angels in America” and “Carousel,” as well as the new musical “The Band’s Visit,” got 11 nominations apiece, while the new play “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” and a revival of “My Fair Lady” each got 10.
The best new musical race will now pit “The Band’s Visit,” a critical darling, against three shows with bigger fan bases but weaker reviews: “Mean Girls,” “SpongeBob SquarePants” and “Frozen.”
Among the boldface names who scored nominations when they were announced Tuesday morning: Denzel Washington, Andrew Garfield, Tina Fey, Amy Schumer, Tony Shalhoub, Michael Cera, Renée Fleming and Diana Rigg.
Thirty Broadway productions were eligible for prizes, the smallest number in more than a decade. This year’s Tony Awards will take place on June 10 at Radio City Music Hall and will be broadcast on CBS.
Magic is not a metaphor.
It’s been a blockbuster season on Broadway, and not just because of record-breaking boxoffice grosses.
Many of the season’s shows are based on widely recognized entertainment brands — “Frozen,” “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” “SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical,” “Mean Girls,” “Escape to Margaritaville” and “Summer: The Donna Summer Musical.” There were solo shows by Bruce Springsteen, Michael Moore, John Lithgow and John Leguizamo, and star turns by Schumer, Washington, Chris Evans, Uma Thurman, Garfield and Clive Owen.
The nominators showered recognition on several of those shows, including “Mean Girls” and “SpongeBob,” but none on “Margaritaville,” which has been struggling at the box office. The Tony nominations, selected by a panel of 43 people knowledgeable about theatre, have the potential to give a lift to the nominated shows, and to signify the beginning of the end for those that are struggling.
Musicals are the bread and butter of contemporary Broadway, and the race for best musical has now tightened.
“The Band’s Visit,” a delicate musical which has been doing solid but not sell-out business at the box office, will now face strengthened challenges from “Mean Girls” and “SpongeBob,” each of which will get a credibility boost from the high number of nominations.
Disney’s “Frozen,” on the other hand, is weakened by the nominations: the show, based on the enormously popular film, got no nominations for its performers nor much of its creative team.
“The Band’s Visit,” which began its stage life at the nonprofit Atlantic Theater Company off-Broadway, is adapted from a fictional 2007 Israeli film about what happens when an Egyptian police band gets stranded for a night in an Israeli desert town. Among the show’s strongest awards contenders are its composer, David Yazbek, who has been nominated for Tonys three times previously but has never won; its star, Katrina Lenk, who plays a fierce and sultry cafe owner Dina; and its director, David Cromer, who is enjoying his first Broadway success with this show.
“Mean Girls” is an adaptation of the 2004 film and “SpongeBob” is a new story featuring the undersea creatures of the animated television series. “Mean Girls” represents the first Broadway venture for comedian Fey, who was nominated for the book of the musical (based on her screenplay for the film), and “SpongeBob” is the first Broadway venture led by Nickelodeon, the children’s cable network.
Among plays, watch for “Cursed Child” and “Angels in America,” both two-part productions which transferred to Broadway after wowing critics and audiences in London’s West End, to do especially well once voting begins.
Springsteen is winning a (special) Tony
Bruce Springsteen can make room for a Tony on his awards shelf. Awards administrators said Tuesday that they had decided to give the 68-year-old rock idol a special Tony Award in recognition of his ongoing songand-storytelling show, “Springsteen on Broadway,” which has been running at the Walter Kerr Theater since October.
The award, calling Springsteen’s show “a once-in-a-lifetime theatre going experience for the Broadway stage, allowing fans an intimate look at a music idol,” is noncompetitive. Springsteen opted not to contend for competitive awards.
The Tony administrators will also give a special Tony to John Leguizamo, citing “his body of work and for his commitment to the theatre, bringing diverse stories and audiences to Broadway for three decades.”
Leguizamo’s fourth one-man show on Broadway, “Latin History for Morons,” ran this season and was nominated for best play.
How did women fare in the #MeToo era?
Women are dramatically underrepresented as decision-makers on Broadway — particularly as producers, directors and writers. But several powerful women scored nods this year.
J.K. Rowling and Sonia Friedman were nominated as two of the three lead producers of “Cursed Child” (the third is Colin Callender). Rowling is the author of the “Harry Potter” books, and Friedman is one of the most successful producers in London.
Two female directors were nominated and are now strong contenders for awards: Marianne Elliott, who directed the “Angels in America” revival, and Tina Landau, who directed “SpongeBob SquarePants.”
Several female writers were also nominated for their work. The leading contender for best book of a musical is Fey, for “Mean Girls.” And playwrights Lucy Kirkwood and Claire van Kampen were nominated for “The Children” and “Farinelli and the King.” (Rowling is not credited as the writer of “Cursed Child,” although she collaborated with author Jack Thorne and director John Tiffany on creating the story.)