The company of SpongeBob SquarePants – The Broadway Musical at the Palace Theatre, New York. Pictures: Joan Marcus
SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical and Mean Girls made it to the top of the heap as the Tony Award nominations were unveiled, each garnering a dozen nods.
Coming up close behind were The Band’s Visit and the revival of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel, each receiving 11 nominations, and the revival of My Fair Lady, with 10.
Among other musicals, the Once on This Island redo captured eight nominations, while Frozen captured three, and Summer: The Donna Summer Musical pulled in two. Totally ignored by the Tony nominators were Escape to Margaritaville, the Jimmy Buffett jukebox musical, and Prince of Broadway, the homage to producer-director Hal Prince whose limited run closed last fall.
For Best Musical, SpongeBob and Mean Girls will compete with Frozen and The Band’s Visit, while the tight Best Musical Revival field will see all three of the season’s revivals battling it out: Carousel, My Fair Lady and Once on This Island.
One of the more expansive Tony races will be Best Leading Actress in a Musical with six ladies in the running: Fair Lady’s Lauren Ambrose; Island’s Hailey Kilgore; Summer’s LaChanze; Band’s Katrina Lenk; Mean Girls’ Taylor Louderman, and Carousel’s Jessie Mueller.
For Best Leading Actor in a musical, the field includes: Fair Lady’s Harry Hadden-Paton; Carousel’s Joshua Henry; Band’s Tony Shalhoub, and SpongeBob’s Ethan Slater.
The featured musical actor contest includes: Fair Lady’s Norbert Leo Butz; Carousel’s Alexander Gemignani; Mean Girls’ Grey Henson; SpongeBob’s Gavin Lee, and Band’s Ari’el Stachel. On the feminine side, it’s Summer’s Ariana DeBose; Carousel’s Renée Fleming and Lindsay Mendez; Mean Girls’ Ashley Park, and Fair Lady’s Diana Rigg.
For best direction, the nominees are Island’s Michael Arden; Band’s David Cromer; SpongeBob’s Tina Landau; Mean Girls’ Casey Nicholaw, and Fair Lady’s Bartlett Sher.
Competing for best musical book are Band’s Itamar Moses; Frozen’s Jennifer Lee; Mean Girls’ Tina Fey, and SpongeBob’s Kyle Jarrow.
Erika Henningsen, Ashley Park, Taylor Louderman and Kate Rockwell in Mean Girls at the August Wilson Theatre, New York
The best score category, peculiarly, has musicals competing against a straight play, describing the classification as the: “Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre.” Thus, Adrian Sutton’s music for the revival of the drama Angels in America is in the race with Band’s David Yazbek; Frozen’s Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez; Mean Girls’ Jeff Richmond and Neil Benjamin; and the multitudinous songwriters who contributed to the score for SpongeBob, including Cyndi Lauper, John Legend, Sara Bareilles and Steven Tyler, to name a few.
The same dichotomy holds in the choreography race, where Steven Hoggett’s work for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is up against Christopher Gattelli, nominated for both Fair Lady and SpongeBob; Casey Nicholaw for Mean Girls, and Justin Peck, Carousel.
Orchestration nods went to Mean Girls’ John Clancy; SpongeBob’s Tom Kitt; Island’s Annmarie Milazzo and Michael Starobin; Band’s Jamshied Sharifi, and Carousel’s Jonathan Tunick. Sound design nominees are Band’s Kai Harada; Island’s Peter Hylenski; Carousel’s Scott Lehrer; Mean Girls’ Brian Ronan, and SpongeBob’s Walter Trarbach and Mike Dobson.
In the design categories, scenery nominees are Island’s Dane Laffrey; Band’s Scott Pask; Mean Girls’ Scott Pask, Finn Ross and Adam Young; Fair Lady’s Michael Yeargan, and SpongeBob’s David Zinn. Cited for costumes are Mean Girls’ Gregg Barnes; Island’s Clint Ramos; Carousel’s Ann Roth; SpongeBob’s David Zinn, and Fair Lady’s Catherine Zuber
Lighting acknowledgements went to SpongeBob’s Kevin Adams; Island’s Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer; Fair Lady’s Donald Holder; Carousel’s Brian MacDevitt, and Band’s Tyler Micoleau.
Now those among the 841 Tony voters who haven’t seen the nominated shows will be scrambling to use their Tony tickets and place their votes. The winners will be handed their trophies on 10 June at Radio City Music Hall, with Sara Bareilles and Josh Groban hosting the event.
The festivities will include the earlier announced Special Tony Awards for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre going to Andrew Lloyd Webber and Chita Rivera. Another special award will be handed to rock legend Bruce Springsteen, recognizing his current blockbuster concert turn in Springsteen on Broadway.
Ron Cohen
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