And just like that, it's Tony season! As always, I will be doing my best to predict this year's winners, and pointing out any discrepancies between who I think *will* win and who *deserves* to win in my analysis. This season has not produced a Hamilton or Dear Evan Hansen level juggernaut, which actually makes a lot of the races more interesting as there isn't a runaway smash to dominate the new musical categories like Best Book and Best Score. So how do I think these two prestigious categories will go down? Read on to find out!
Best Book
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| Erika Henningson as Cady Heron and Ashley Park, Taylor Louderman, and Karen Rockwell as the titular Mean Girls. |
Nominees: Itamar Moses, The Band's Visit; Jennifer Lee, Frozen; Tina Fey, Mean Girls; Kyle Jarrow, SpongeBob SquarePants
No point in beating around the bush: this is Tina Fey's award to lose. Her book for Mean Girls is just as hysterically funny and endlessly quotable as the film, and although this is her Broadway debut she is a beloved comedy icon the Broadway community has welcomed with open arms. Her greatest competition is Itamar Moses for The Band's Visit, a critical darling of a musical character study which I found to be lacking in the character department. Understated to a fault, Moses' book does a poor job of transitioning into the musical numbers or sufficiently establishing the characters when they aren't singing, leaving the whole show feeling dramatically inert.
If anyone truly deserves to upset Fey it's Kyle Jarrow, who crafted an original narrative for SpongeBob SquarePants that for the most part seamlessly integrates the songs of over a dozen pop artists. He's a big reason SpongeBob feels like a proper musical and not a corporation-birthed Frankenstein monster, and he deftly balances appeasing the cartoon's massive fan base while keeping the show accessible to those who have never seen an episode in their life. As for Frozen's Jennifer Lee, she has admirable expanded her original screenplay for the stage, but will have to settle for the honor of being nominated (and the huge royalty checks Disney sends her each month).
If anyone truly deserves to upset Fey it's Kyle Jarrow, who crafted an original narrative for SpongeBob SquarePants that for the most part seamlessly integrates the songs of over a dozen pop artists. He's a big reason SpongeBob feels like a proper musical and not a corporation-birthed Frankenstein monster, and he deftly balances appeasing the cartoon's massive fan base while keeping the show accessible to those who have never seen an episode in their life. As for Frozen's Jennifer Lee, she has admirable expanded her original screenplay for the stage, but will have to settle for the honor of being nominated (and the huge royalty checks Disney sends her each month).
Will and Should Win: Tina Fey, Mean Girls
Bonus Prediction: After years of handing out Best Book during commercial breaks, the Tony telecast will magically find time to actually show this category and its presumed big name winner on air.
Best Score
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| The cast of The Band's Visit on Broadway. |
Nominees: Adrian Sutton, Angels in America; David Yazbek, The Band's Visit; Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, Frozen; Jeff Richmond and Nell Benjamin, Mean Girls; Various Artists, SpongeBob SquarePants
A week hours ago this category seemed pretty cut and dry. David Yazbek, previously nominated in this category three times without winning, has written the score to the most critically lauded musical of the season. And his ethereal music for The Band's Visit is easily the most beguiling part of that production, so a Tony Award appeared to be in his immediate future. But then the Outer Critics' Circle awarded Best Score to the 17 recording artists behind SpongBob SquarePants, a show that increasingly looks like it could be a major dark horse contender during this year's awards season.
However, while SpongeBob's win is an interesting wrinkle, it probably won't affect the final outcome. Remember that Yazbek wasn't eligible for this year's OCCs since The Band's Visit premiered Off-Broadway last season and so competed in the 2017 awards (which it and Yazbek both won). I still consider him the front runner, but if there were to be an upset, SpongeBob now seems the most likely suspect. The merely serviceable score of unmemorable songs in Mean Girls poses no real threat. Meanwhile, husband and wife team Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez have beautifully augmented Frozen's score for the stage, but the Disney megamusical has left critics cold and no one can argue the multiple Oscar and Emmy winners *need* another award. And while its wonderful for Adrian Sutton that his Angels in America score was nominated, this is still at heart a musical songwriting category, and I cannot imagine Tony voters going against that with even semi-viable alternatives, which they have.
Will and Should Win: David Yazbek, The Band's Visit
Keep checking this space for more 2018 Tony Award predictions in the weeks ahead! In the meantime, make your voice heard in the comments, and check out the rest of my Tony coverage by clicking below:
Tony Nominations React
Keep checking this space for more 2018 Tony Award predictions in the weeks ahead! In the meantime, make your voice heard in the comments, and check out the rest of my Tony coverage by clicking below:
Tony Nominations React
I don't think Tina Fey is as strong of a lock as you may think. From what I've heard, a number of critics had issues with the book of Mean Girls, saying it basically is a carbon copy of the movie's script and adds nothing new. I know The Band's Visit is also based on a movie, but I've never heard people accuse it of being too much of a carbon copy of the movie.
ReplyDeletePlus, the Tony for Best Musical and Best Book Of A Musical almost always seem to go hand in hand. I think the only time this decade they were split was in 2013 when Kinky Boots won Best Musical and Matilda won Best Book Of A Musical.
What critics are you referring to? I read a lot of the "Mean Girls" reviews and the book was generally one of the more lauded aspects (especially compared with the score, which is mediocre). Some scenes are almost verbatim lifted from the movie, but there's also enough added and updated material that I don't think anyone can reasonably call it a carbon copy of the movie.
DeleteAnd I will get into this more in a later post, but I'm not convinced "The Band's Visit" is the lock for Best Musical a lot of people think it is. It is certainly the critic's pick, but critics actually can't vote on the Tonys, and a lot of the reaction I've encountered from other theatre goers tends towards underwhelmed.
The fact that you bring up "Kinky Boots" vs. "Matilda" is interesting because I think that is very relevant to this season. "Matilda" was the clear critic's choice, but "Kinky Boots" won a lot of awards because of a more famous creative team and being more of a crowd pleaser, both of which describe "Mean Girls" far more than "The Band's Visit." Looking back further, "Fela" vs. "Memphis" in 2010 was a similar situation in which the critics vastly preferred "Fela" but "Memphis" won the big prize by being more accessible. I'm not 100% sure which way things will go just yet, but if I was a producer on "The Band's Visit" I would be wary of counting my chickens before they hatch.
I agree with you Jared. And I really hope it is David Yazbeck’s year to win a Tony! After being beat out by popular musicals such as The Producers, The Light in the Piazza, and The Book of Mormon, I really feel like this is his year for Best Score.
DeleteIt certainly feels like it's his time! (Although I will defend all three of those scores beating the Yazbek ones they were up against lol)
DeleteThough there were also a couple times in this decade where there were splits between Book and Score. In 2012 Once won Book and Newsies won Score, (albeit, Once wasn't eligible for that category). In 2014, Gentleman's Guide won Book and The Bridges of Madison County won Score (albeit, it wasn't nominated for Book).
DeleteOh I totally agree! All three scores that were up against his rightly won.
ReplyDeleteAnd you are right about they televising Best Book! I hadn’t thought about that until I read your post.
Didn't Tina Fey just basically do a straightforward adaptation of the film where the only major differences are that it’s been updated to 2018? In the past, whenever a musical adaptation of a film won this category, it’s usually been for a more inventive adaptation like The Producers, Hairspray, Billy Elliot, and Once.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I understand this line of reasoning that Tina Fey needed to reinvent the wheel for "Mean Girls." That movie is as popular as it is because of her rock solid script, so the idea she should change it just for the sake of changing it seems odd to me. Also, as someone who is exceedingly familiar with the film I would argue that she updated it the same amount as something like "The Producers" (a musical I dearly love, which hews pretty closely to the plot beats of the film).
DeleteI'm not saying that one has to reinvent the wheel just for the sake of doing it, theatre and film does not work the same way. What works so well in film does not translate well to the stage (and vice versa). If you watch the original films of The Producers and Hairspray, then take a look at their musical counterparts, you can see that they're more than just straightforward adaptations.
DeleteAnd I am saying that "Mean Girls" to me feels like a similar transformation. While most of the iconic lines/jokes are included there's plenty of new material and what is reused from the film is often approached from a different angle.
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