Who SHOULD win The Tony Awards Sunday night and why

• The 2018 Tony Awards will be presented Sunday, June 10 at 8pm (ET) on CBS.

Despite the Broadway League’s crowing about the 2017-2018 season being “the highest-grossing and highest-attended season in Broadway recorded history”, the season was not the best.

So my list below of who should win in the 2018 Tony Award’s 26 categories should include an assumed caveat in several of the major competitions – “given what we have to choose from.”

There are some major exceptions to this assessment, especially the exceptional show The Band’s Visit.

These are my preferences – not predictions – for the 2018 Tony Awards, in keeping with a tradition I’ve been maintaining for more than a decade. I am a critic, not a seer or a bookie. We’ll learn the choices of the Tony voters on Sunday, June 10^th, which is soon enough.

I also continue another annual tradition, a survey of my readers for their preferences (again, not their predictions), which at least helps gauge the nominees’ popularity.

Best Musical

Nominated:

The Band’s Visit
Frozen
Mean Girls
SpongeBob SquarePants, The Broadway Musical

Poll pick: The Band’s Visit

My preference: The Band’s Visit

The Band’s Visit is a lovely, low-key musical based on an offbeat Israeli film. It features  David Yazbek’s exquisite Middle Eastern score and delicious lyrics, and a spot-on cast.. It is an amusing show full of eccentric characters, but beneath all its whimsy and the engaging peculiarities of its individual characters is the aching story of the universal yearning and (not always successful) struggle for communication and connection The tensions between Arabs and Israelis are acknowledged in an understated way, delivering no artificial happiness but suggesting reasons to be hopeful.

The Band’s Visit is to me as clear a choice in this category as Hamilton was in 2016, and in some ways it is more important, because at least in 2016 some of the other nominated shows in the category were both innovative and substantive. This year, the other shows are all brands.

I don’t understand the enthusiasm for Mean Girls, a trivial musical that tacks on some facile moral lessons at the end after more than two hours of reducing teenagers to stereotypes for our amusement. At the very least it’s ill timed, given the heroic high school students who’ve been in the news this year.

For all the Broadway musical marks Frozen hits, it’s as if in striving and straining to give us a really big show, it skips over some storytelling and characterization that might have drawn some of us in more fully.

SpongeBob has a tuneful and eclectic score of mostly original songs by an impressive roster of pop songwriters, and it is fun and well done for what it is. But what is it besides an overlong brand extension about a cartoon sponge?  Some claim it is political, advocating for inclusion and caring about the planet. I’ll give them that, but the SpongeBob team makes these points with the same level of subtlety with which they end the show – which they do with a cascade of confetti descending on our heads…AND crepe paper streamers…AND soap bubbles…followed by beach balls.

Best Play

Nominated: The Children’

Farinelli and The King;
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts One and Two;
Junk;
Latin History for Morons

Poll pick: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

My preference: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

The stage play that continues the boy wizard’s saga offers some wonderful stage effects, and a few choice performances among its huge, universally competent cast. There are too many flaws in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child to consider it a great play, including its needlessly long running time, and the inescapable fact that those who aren’t already immersed in the Potter canon are likely to feel lost, and, worse, indifferent.  But its stagecraft makes it an awe-inspiring production.

I really adored Latin History for Morons, seeing it as auguring a promising new phase in John Leguizamo’s career as a theater artist, and there is something to like or at least admire in each of the other three plays. The Children and Junk are both serious works that have something to say. But none match Potter in their ambition; and their concerns with the actual world didn’t engage me enough to guilt me into dismissing the wizardry on stage at the Lyric.

Best Revival of a Musical

Nominated

My Fair Lady
Once On This Island
Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel|
Poll pick: Once on This Island

My preference: My Fair Lady

All three nominated musicals are lavish productions with tuneful scores rendered by talented casts. All three are also problematic choices to revive in our current cultural moment for their depiction of the main women characters.

I pick My Fair Lady because director Bartlett Sher at least doesn’t ignore the problem. The fourth Broadway revival of Lerner and Loew’s 1956 musical, makes it clear through a stage direction that Eliza will walk away from Henry Higgins. The performers let us see that their characters have no romantic interest in one another.

This change has baffled or outraged some devotees of the musical, and it doesn’t square with some of the song lyrics. But to me, Sher’s changes restore the musical to the original intent in George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion, from which My Fair Lady was adapted. Not coincidentally, they also make the characters more palatable in our #MeToo era.

Best Revival of a Play

Nominated:

Angels in America
Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women
Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh
Lobby Hero
Travesties

Poll pick: Angels in America

My preference: Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women

It is hard to imagine a better production of Albee’s humorous, caustic, secretly compassionate look at a life and a death. Angels in America is a great play, ambitious in scope, insightful, ever-relevant, but the production on Broadway is not hugely more significant than others I’ve seen recently, and too many of the American accents got in the way.

Best Book of a Musical

Nominated:

The Band’s Visit, Itamar Moses
Frozen, Jennifer Lee
Mean Girls, Tina Fey
SpongeBob SquarePants, Kyle Jarrow

My preference: The Band’s Visit

This is no contest as far as I’m concerned. Itamar Moses is  respectful of the film, but translates it masterfully for the stage in a story that is both doleful and droll.

As often seems to be the case when it comes to this Tony category, the book is actually the worst aspect of several of these musicals. SpongeBob’s plot is so simple and uninvolving it’s as if they didn’t want it to get in the way of the show. I would hate to see this award go to Mean Girls. Yes, Tina Fey is a celebrity, but this is not Fey at her best

Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre

Angels in America, Music: Adrian Sutton

The Band’s Visit, Music & Lyrics: David Yazbek

Frozen, Music & Lyrics: Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez

Mean Girls, Music: Jeff Richmond, Lyrics: Nell Benjamin

SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical, Music & Lyrics: Yolanda Adams, Steven Tyler & Joe Perry of Aerosmith, Sara Bareilles, Jonathan Coulton, Alex Ebert of Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, The Flaming Lips, Lady Antebellum, Cyndi Lauper & Rob Hyman, John Legend, Panic! at the Disco, Plain White T’s, They Might Be Giants, T.I., Domani & Lil’C

My preference: The Band’s Visit

The music of The Band’s Visit dares to be different, with music ranging from Jewish klezmer to Israeli jazz to Egyptian pop, and even a ravishing classical Middle Eastern concerto

SpongeBob deserves a shout-out just for the sheer amount of work it took to get all those popular singer-songwriters and bands to contribute original songs.

What is Angels in America doing in this category?

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play

Nominated:

Andrew Garfield, Angels in America
Tom Hollander, Travesties
Jamie Parker, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts One and Two
Mark Rylance, Farinelli and The King
Denzel Washington, Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh

Poll pick: Andrew Garfield

My preference: Tom Hollander

Yes, I know, a quixotic quest on my part. But Tom Hollander carries Travesties. His energetic clowning never wavers, but he also manages to bring clarity and feeling to Tom Stoppard’s mind-boggling collage of a play.

If Andrew Garfield wins, it’ll be an acknowledgement that his performance as Prior Walter, alternately campy and terrified, is brave for a movie star. 

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play

Glenda Jackson, Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women
Condola Rashad, Saint Joan
Lauren Ridloff, Children of a Lesser God
Amy Schumer, Meteor Shower

Poll pick: Glenda Jackson

My preference: Glenda Jackson

Glenda Jackson cannot be denied. Jackson returns to Broadway after an absence of thirty years to portray a rich, regal old lady who’s become a monster, and is also dying, a performance that manages to be simultaneously ferocious and vulnerable. Although Jackson herself is now 82 years old, she has that ability that great actresses have of convincing us that her portrayal of a dying 92-year-old is an act; that the actress herself is fully in command of an endless depth and power. In other hands, Albee’s play might seem cold. Jackson’s meditation on facing death finds the heartbreak in it

Shout-out to Lauren Ridloff, making an impressive Broadway debut in what is, incredibly, her professional stage debut as well.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical

Nominated:

Harry Hadden-Paton, My Fair Lady
Joshua Henry, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel
Tony Shalhoub, The Band’s Visit
Ethan Slater, SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical

Poll pick: Ethan Slater

My preference: Tony Shalhoub

Shalhoub is one of the two nominees in this category who have told interviewers they never imagined being singled out for a singing role. (The other is Anthony Hadden-Paton) But Shalhoub brings to the character of the Egyptian bandleader a subtlety of intelligence, wit and heart that, let’s face it, is rare for a character in a musical.

A shout-out to Ethan Slater, who makes an energetic Broadway debut anthropomorphizing an optimistic cartoon sponge

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical

Nominated:

Lauren Ambrose, My Fair Lady
Hailey Kilgore, Once On This Island
LaChanze, Summer: The Donna Summer Musical
Katrina Lenk, The Band’s Visit
Taylor Louderman, Mean Girls
Jessie Mueller, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel

Poll pick: Katrina Lenk

My preference: Katrina Lenk

 Lenk elevates the narrow-eyed deadpan into an exquisite art form.  There is nothing funnier than her delivery of the song “Welcome to Nowhere.”  Yet, we sense beneath the bored façade a raw emotion, too sensitive to be touched.  If the world were just, this role (following up on her turn in Indecent) would make Katrina Lenk a star

Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play

Anthony Boyle, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts One and Two
Michael Cera, Lobby Hero
Brian Tyree Henry, Lobby Hero
Nathan Lane, Angels in America
David Morse, Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh

Poll pick: Nathan Lane, Angels in America

My preference: Nathan Lane, Angels in America

Lane lets us see the ugliness of his character,  and even some of his desperation, but he largely rips into the role of Roy Cohn like the vaudevillian he is. The result is entertaining, but not, as the saying goes, the definitive interpretation that I believe Lane would be capable of.

A shout-out to Anthony Boyle, the 23-year-old British actor who as Scorpius Malfoy carries a surprisingly large chunk of Harry Potter on his shoulders, and does a mean cackle.

Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play

Nominated:

Susan Brown, Angels in America
Noma Dumezweni, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts One and Two
Deborah Findlay, The Children
Denise Gough, Angels in America
Laurie Metcalf, Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women

Poll pick: Denise Gough

My preference: Laurie Metcalf

 Metcalf is not the first actress you might think of to portray the cold patrician at middle age, but it is precisely her more down-home interpretation that serves as perfect counterpoint to Glenda Jackson’s performance, and gives what could be stilted dialogue in Three Tall Women a sense of a natural flow.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical

Nominated

Norbert Leo Butz, My Fair Lady
Alexander Gemignani, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel
Grey Henson, Mean Girls
Gavin Lee, SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical
Ari’el Stachel, The Band’s Visit

Poll pick: Gavin Lee

My preference: Gavin Lee

One must pay one’s respects to tradition, and Gavin Lee as Squidward Q. Tentacles  gives a traditional show-stopping performance that has legs – four of them!

Ari’el Stachel, who is touching and hilarious as the band’s Lothario, deserves a Tony too, and I hope there’s a tie.

Shout-out to Grey Henson, who is a razzle-dazzle artist, a quipster, and the best thing about Mean Girls.

Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical

Ariana DeBose, Summer: The Donna Summer Musical
Renée Fleming, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel
Lindsay Mendez, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel
Ashley Park, Mean Girls
Diana Rigg, My Fair Lady

Poll pick: Lindsay Mendez

My preference: Lindsay Mendez

Mendez, always a winning performer, stands out in Carousel for presenting the complexity of a naïve woman, both her humor and her pathos.  She does both in the scenes and in the songs; she has a beautiful voice, but it’s her acting that makes her songs so engaging.

Best Scenic Design of a Play

Miriam Buether, Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women
Jonathan Fensom, Farinelli and The King
Christine Jones, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts One and Two
Santo Loquasto, Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh
Ian MacNeil and Edward Pierce, Angels in America

My preference: Miriam Buether, Three Tall Women

Buether creates the persuasive home of a rich old lady, and then, in the second half, brings us into a netherworld of her own imagining, which is equally persuasive.

There’s nothing elaborate here; it doesn’t use state-of-the-art technology. It’s simply well thought out.

Best Scenic Design of a Musical

Dane Laffrey, Once On This Island
Scott Pask, The Band’s Visit
Scott Pask, Finn Ross & Adam Young, Mean Girls
Michael Yeargan, My Fair Lady
David Zinn, SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical

My preference: The Band’s Visit

The set somehow translates onto the stage the vast emptiness and loneliness of the Israeli desert, which was depicted in the movie.

All the other nominees deserve shout-outs, but a special one to projection designers Pask collaborators Finn Ross and Adam Young, for their next-generation video projection design, replacing traditional sets,  although theirs is more often a model of efficiency than artistry, bringing us swiftly and effortlessly to one familiar-looking high school locale after another.

Best Costume Design of a Play

Jonathan Fensom, Farinelli and The King
Nicky Gillibrand, Angels in America
Katrina Lindsay, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts One and Two
Ann Roth, Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women
Ann Roth, Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh

My preference: Ann Roth, Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women

All three women, who are the same woman at different ages in Act II of Three Tall Women, are wearing purple dresses, but the youngest’s has a design of flowers, the middle age woman’s  has an abstract design and the oldest’s is solid purple, with a bold string of pearls – as lovely and thought-provoking a symbolic representation of aging as I’ve ever seen. Roth’s costumes in the first half also help clarify the characters in a wonderful way.  Pill’s character is wearing stiletto heels, while Metcalf’s is wearing sneakers

Shout-out to Jonathan Fensom for the sumptuousness of his costumes.

Best Costume Design of a Musical

Gregg Barnes, Mean Girls
Clint Ramos, Once On This Island
Ann Roth, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel
David Zinn, SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical
Catherine Zuber, My Fair Lady

My preference: Catherine Zuber, My Fair Lady

Zuber’s outfits are not only lovely and period-perfect; they also often clarify the moment and enhance the tone. It’s a nice touch that during Henry Higgins tutoring session with Eliza Doolittle, Higgins wears a white lab coat, as if he’s the scientist and she’s his experiment.

When Higgins brings nervous Eliza to Ascot to test-run her newfound upper class manner, she is saddled with a fashionable, ridiculously unwieldy hat that looks in danger of toppling to the ground, and bringing her with it.

Best Lighting Design of a Play

Neil Austin, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts One and Two
Paule Constable, Angels in America
Jules Fisher + Peggy Eisenhauer, Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh
Paul Russell, Farinelli and The King
Ben Stanton, Junk

My preference: Neil Austin, Harry Potter.

The lighting was an intrinsic part of the wizardry.

Best Lighting Design of a Musical

Kevin Adams, SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical
Jules Fisher + Peggy Eisenhauer, Once On This Island
Donald Holder, My Fair Lady
Brian MacDevitt, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel
Tyler Micoleau, The Band’s Visit

My preference: Tyler Micoleau, The Band’s Visit

Best Sound Design of a Play

Nominated:

Adam Cork, Travesties
Ian Dickinson for Autograph, Angels in America
Gareth Fry, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts One and Two
Tom Gibbons, 1984
Dan Moses Schreier, Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh

My preference: Gareth Fry, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts One and Two

This is the first year that the Tony Awards committee has brought back the two sound design categories, which they had eliminated after the 2014 Tonys because, they said, the Tony voters weren’t knowledgeable enough to judge.

Fry and his team have created an aural vocabulary to accompany the acts of magic – even the magic cloaks are given their own sound —  but they are also adept at incorporating everyday ambiance and Imogen Heap’s music into the soundscape.

Best Sound Design of a Musical

Nominated:
Kai Harada, The Band’s Visit
Peter Hylenski, Once On This Island
Scott Lehrer, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel
Brian Ronan, Mean Girls
Walter Trarbach and Mike Dobson, SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical

My preference: Kai Harada, The Band’s Visit

Best Direction of a Play

Nominated:

Marianne Elliott, Angels in America
Joe Mantello, Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women
Patrick Marber, Travesties
John Tiffany, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts One and Two
George C. Wolfe, Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh

Poll pick: Marianne Elliott, Angels in America

My preference: Joe Mantello, Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women

Best Direction of a Musical

Nominated:

Michael Arden, Once On This Island
David Cromer, The Band’s Visit
Tina Landau, SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical
Casey Nicholaw, Mean Girls
Bartlett Sher, My Fair Lady

Poll pick: Michael Arden, Once on This Island

My preference: David Cromer: The Band’s Visit

Best Choreography

Nominated

Christopher Gattelli, My Fair Lady
Christopher Gattelli, SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical
Steven Hoggett, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts One and Two
Casey Nicholaw, Mean Girls
Justin Peck, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel

Poll pick: Justin Peck

My preference: Justin Peck, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel

Peck goes way beyond the traditional Broadway choreography in ways that are thrilling. He recently explained that the movement in the musical number “Blow High, Blow Low” is inspired by actual practical tasks, activities, and physical movements that would take place on a whaling ship. It’s a lot of twisting, rotating, rope-rolling, pulley-system mechanics.

Shout-out to Steven Hoggett, who, yes, deserved to be nominated in a category usually reserved for musicals.

Best Orchestrations

John Clancy, Mean Girls
Tom Kitt, SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical
Annmarie Milazzo & Michael Starobin, Once On This Island
Jamshied Sharifi, The Band’s Visit
Jonathan Tunick, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel

My preference: Jamshied Sharifi, The Band’s Visit

This is a glorious category; there was rich sound on Broadway this season. A definite shout-out to Jonathan Tunick, 50 years tuning our ears on Broadway.

But, again, The Band’s Visit stands out for its unusual choice of musical genres, and for the innovative way it is  performed  — by musicians, some of them members of the orchestra we see on stage, using instruments that include the oud, riq and darbouka from the Middle East (a type of stringed instrument, tambourine and drum, respectively.)