Tonys: 'Harry Potter' Looks Unbeatable for Play Honors, But Best Musical, Revivals Will Be Nail-Biters

Among familiar Hollywood names landing nominations for their work this season are Andrew Garfield, Denzel Washington, Mark Rylance, Nathan Lane, Glenda Jackson, Laurie Metcalf and Amy Schumer.

Early prognostications for the 2018 Tony Awards had The Band’s Visit and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child taking up pole position in the two most important races — best musical and best play. The nominations, announced Tuesday morning, confirmed that the new installment of J.K. Rowling’s blockbuster wizardry saga will be the play to beat, but forecasting top musical honors just got a whole lot trickier.

That’s because two shows once perceived as unthreatening challengers, Mean Girls and SpongeBob SquarePants, scored an impressive 12 nominations apiece, giving them a narrow lead over The Band’s Visit, which landed 11.

Does that mean the musical adapted by Tina Fey from her beloved movie about the treacherous jungle of high school could find itself in the winners’ circle? Or Nickelodeon’s Bikini Bottom frolic, with its colorful cast of undersea creatures and a score written by more than a dozen contributors from the pop world? Anything is possible, particularly when you factor in the high standing in the entertainment industry of Fey, whose genuinely funny book for the Mean Girls musical is a greater asset than its mostly forgettable score (by Fey’s husband Jeff Richmond and lyricist Nell Benjamin).

It doesn’t hurt either to have a terrific young cast represented across three acting categories, even if, unlike The Band’s Visit lead actress Katrina Lenk (nominated with castmates Tony Shalhoub and Ari’el Stachel), none of those Mean Girls contenders is favored to win.

For now, the smart money remains on The Band’s Visit for the top prize, the only one generally considered to have an enduring impact at the box office. In what has been widely regarded as an undistinguished season for new work, in which established brands have dominated the Broadway landscape, the show’s delicate reinvention of a little-seen Israeli movie gives it more of a stamp of originality than the competition, which also includes Disney’s Frozen, with a modest three nominations.

The Band’s Visit has been tipped for Tony glory since it premiered in December 2016 to rave reviews in a sold-out extended run at off-Broadway’s Atlantic Theater Company. It transferred to Broadway’s Ethel Barrymore Theatre last October, opening to renewed critical support and surprisingly steady business, grossing a healthy $28 million to date.

The modestly scaled production now stands a good shot of joining other recent top Tony winners like Once and Fun Home in showing that voters will often choose intimacy and emotional richness over splashy Broadway spectacle or crowd-pleasing comedy. If it prevails at the Tonys ceremony on June 10, it will mark a change of fortune for composer David Yazbek, whose 2000 Broadway debut, The Full Monty, earned 10 Tony noms and won zero, trampled by the massive sweep of Mel Brooks’ The Producers.

If The Band’s Visit is a classic example of the critically adored underdog, the play field is dominated, to nobody’s surprise, by a commercial behemoth. Imported from London, where it won a record nine Olivier Awards and has been playing to packed houses since summer 2016, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is the most expensive nonmusical ever mounted on Broadway, with a combined cost of $68.5 million. That includes an extensive makeover, specially tailored for the production, of the Lyric Theatre, where it no doubt will run for years.

The two-part play, which runs five and a half hours in total, picked up 10 Tony nominations, and is in the running for best play against four productions that have closed, putting them at a distinct disadvantage. But Harry Potter, which opened April 22 on Broadway to monster box office and stellar reviews, may have trouble equaling its Olivier haul, thanks to stiff competition in the acting races.

Much of that comes from another London import, the National Theatre’s lauded production of Angels in America, which chalked up 11 nominations (a record for a nonmusical) including best revival of a play, and acting nods for Andrew Garfield, Nathan Lane, Susan Brown and Denise Gough. Harry Potter director John Tiffany, a previous winner for Once, is up against Angels‘ two-time previous winner Marianne Elliott (War Horse, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time).

But a win for Angels as best revival of a play is far from a lock. In what will be one of the most suspenseful categories of the evening, Tony Kushner’s landmark two-part epic faces off against Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh with eight nominations, including director George C. Wolfe, lead actor Denzel Washington and featured actor David Morse; and Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women with six noms. One of those — Glenda Jackson for lead actress in a play — looks certain to land the win, though don’t count out featured actress Laurie Metcalf (a lead actress winner last year for A Doll’s House, Part 2) or director Joe Mantello.

Reflecting a season that was far more notable for reinvigorated revivals than original work, Angels, Iceman and Three Tall Women also are up against Tom Stoppard’s Travesties, with four noms including director Patrick Marber and lead actor Tom Hollander; and Kenneth Lonergan’s Lobby Hero, with featured actor nods for Michael Cera and Brian Tyree Henry — though not for Chris Evans in his Broadway debut.

The race for best musical revival is somewhat narrower, given that only three qualifying productions opened this season, but each of that trio of contenders has strong merits.

Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel leads with 11 noms, including Joshua Henry, who looks like the frontrunner for best actor in a musical, as is Lindsay Mendez for featured actress. Jessie Mueller and Renee Fleming also scored acting nods for the production, though Jack O’Brien is notably absent from the directing stakes. It does, however, have a strong shot at winning for wunderkind ballet luminary Justin Peck’s athletic choreography, his first for a musical theater production.

Serious competition for musical revival comes from Lerner & Loewe’s My Fair Lady, directed by Bartlett Sher, whose previous stagings of canonical musicals for Lincoln Center Theater, South Pacific and The King and I, both won that award. My Fair Lady grabbed 10 noms, including for Sher’s direction, lead actress Lauren Ambrose, lead actor Harry Hadden-Paton, featured actress Diana Rigg and featured actor Norbert Leo Butz, a two-time previous winner.

But the third challenger, Once on This Island, is definitely in the running with eight noms, including director Michael Arden for his vividly immersive staging and gifted newcomer Hailey Kilgore for lead actress.

The flurry of attention during the six weeks between the announcement of Tony nominations and the awards themselves can provide a major shot in the arm to shows flagging at the box office. Since most of this season’s major contenders have been doing business ranging from sturdy through spectacular, the chief beneficiary promises to be SpongeBob SquarePants.

The buoyant musical was a surprise hit with critics, in particular for nominated director Tina Landau’s wildly imaginative staging, hallucinogenic design elements and the disarming lead performance in the title role of human cartoon Ethan Slater, also among the nominees. But the show has struggled to fill the massive Palace Theatre, slipping notably in recent weeks, so its 12 nominations couldn’t come at a better time.

On a less upbeat commercial note, at least one or two productions hoping for a Tony boost invariably get shut out. That was the case this year with the Jimmy Buffett jukebox musical Escape to Margaritaville, which has encountered a shortage of Parrotheads in New York. Landing zero Tony nominations won’t likely change that.