2018 Tony Nominations: 'Mean Girls' and 'SpongeBob' Lead the Way

• Two musicals with enormous brand names, “Mean Girls” and “SpongeBob SquarePants,” led the pack of Tony-nominated shows Tuesday morning, 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: 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.

[Critics on the nominations | Who is nominated? | Nominee reactions]

And now, the races begin.

“The Band’s Visit,” a delicate musical that has been doing strong but not sell-out business at the box office, will face strengthened challenges from “Mean Girls” and “SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical,” two titles that arrived with built-in fan bases, in the highest-stakes race in this year’s Tony Awards.

In something of a surprise, “Mean Girls,” Tina Fey’s musical adaptation of her 2004 film about high school social dynamics, and the eye-popping “SpongeBob,” based on the animated television series about underwater sea creatures, led the nominations on Tuesday, each earning 12 nods. Both are spearheaded by cultural powerhouses: Ms. Fey is one of the nation’s most well-liked comedic writers and performers, and “SpongeBob,” with a huge cult following, is the first Broadway venture led by Nickelodeon, the children’s cable network.

“The Band’s Visit,” by contrast, 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. It is a bit of an oddity on Broadway — more subtle than showy, long on loneliness and short on spectacle — with aching performances and unusually artful lyrics. But after a successful start at the Atlantic Theater Company Off Broadway, it moved to Broadway and earned superlative reviews.

The fourth contender for best musical is Disney’s “Frozen,” based on the enormously popular animated film, which was not embraced by critics. The show didn’t get nominations for its performers or much of its creative team, although it did score nods for its book and score.

Even seasoned entertainers said the nominations were a thrill.

“I cannot lie — I cried a little bit in the middle of Equinox this morning, and not because my workout was too hard,” Ms. Fey said in an interview. “It’s such a childhood dream. You go back to when you were a kid and going to see shows — getting a Playbill, dreaming of being in a Playbill some day.”

A panel of 43 theater experts who saw all 30 eligible shows over the last year voted on the nominations. The voters are not allowed to have any financial relationship with any of the eligible shows.

“SpongeBob,” “Mean Girls” and “Frozen” are among numerous big brands that have dominated a season whose new shows have also included “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” “Escape to Margaritaville” and “Summer: The Donna Summer Musical.” There were also solo shows by Bruce Springsteen, Michael Moore, John Lithgow and John Leguizamo, and star turns by Amy Schumer, Denzel Washington, Chris Evans, Uma Thurman, Andrew Garfield and Clive Owen.

Big plays get big notice.

The two most-nominated play productions — “Angels in America” and “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” — are long (each is staged in two parts), big (large casts, giant sets) and British (each transferred to Broadway from the West End). And both feature wings (don’t ask).

They are competing in different categories. The 11 nominations for the revival of “Angels” make that the most-nominated production of a play in Broadway history. The seven-and-a-half-hour drama, written by Tony Kushner, is a searing, sometimes surreal tale set in the Reagan era during the onset of the AIDS crisis; the original, staged a quarter century ago as two plays over two seasons, won a Pulitzer and many Tonys.

“I’m enormously happy, and very moved,” Mr. Kushner said on Tuesday. “Being on Broadway is always exciting — there’s a feeling of an immediate and a lively connection to American theater history, and to the extent the Tonys are a celebration of theater in the United States, it’s great to know that the play still has a place and that people are still excited about it.”

“Angels” is now the leading contender for best play revival, but the category is extraordinarily strong, and includes new productions of “Three Tall Women,” by Edward Albee; “The Iceman Cometh,” by Eugene O’Neill; “Lobby Hero,” by Kenneth Lonergan; and “Travesties,” by Tom Stoppard.

At nearly four hours long, “Iceman” (like “Angels” and “Cursed Child”) is not for those with short attention spans, though it is swifter than earlier productions of the play. “Three Tall Women” and “Lobby Hero” share a different distinction — they are on Broadway for the first time, but are considered revivals because they have been widely staged since their Off Broadway debuts decades ago.

Among new plays, “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” is the overwhelming favorite. A sequel to the seven novels, it depicts a time when Harry and his friends are parents of Hogwarts students, and grappling simultaneously with ominous signs in the wizarding world and the ordinary challenges of raising adolescents.

“Cursed Child” is the only one of the nominated new plays still running. The others are “The Children,” by Lucy Kirkwood; “Farinelli and the King,” by Claire van Kampen; “Junk,” by Ayad Akhtar; and “Latin History for Morons,” by John Leguizamo.

A veteran returns, and many new faces.

Probably the surest shot in the whole Tonys derby is Glenda Jackson, who at 81 and after two decades in British Parliament, has returned to the stage and is up for leading actress in a play.

Ms. Jackson, a two-time Oscar winner who last appeared on Broadway in 1988, portrays a formidable matriarch in “Three Tall Women.”

Another veteran getting notice: Diana Rigg, a beloved British actress who won a Tony in 1994 for “Medea,” now back on Broadway at 79 with a fierce, funny and feminist take on Mrs. Higgins in a heralded revival of “My Fair Lady.”

Ten other performers were nominated for their Broadway debuts, dazzling audiences with unexpected gifts.

Among them: The 19-year-old Hailey Kilgore, for her breakout performance as Ti Moune, the self-sacrificing girl at the heart of “Once on This Island”; Ari’el Stachel, who had to audition seven times before landing the role as Haled, an amorous Egyptian trumpeter, in “The Band’s Visit”; Lauren Ridloff, a onetime Miss Deaf America who unexpectedly landed the starring role of Sarah Norman in a revival of “Children of a Lesser God”; and Ethan Slater, who used lessons learned as a high school wrestler to develop a physical language for SpongeBob SquarePants.

Another nominated debut is for an actress with a high profile already: the comedian Amy Schumer. The writer Steve Martin approached Ms. Schumer at a starry party and asked her to read the script of a play he was working on. She agreed, and that led to the production of “Meteor Shower” on Broadway.

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). Ms. Rowling is the author of the “Harry Potter” books, and Ms. 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.”

And despite some concern that their gender politics were dated, the lush musical revivals of “My Fair Lady” and “Carousel” scored well in the nominations, and are selling well at the box office.

Several female writers were also singled out. The leading contender for best book of a musical is Ms. Fey, and Ms. Kirkwood and Ms. van Kampen were nominated their plays. (Ms. Rowling is not credited as the writer of “Cursed Child,” although she collaborated with the dramatist, Jack Thorne, and the director, John Tiffany, on creating the story.)

Racial and ethnic diversity is always a big issue on Broadway. Of the 39 performers nominated for Tonys, 13 are black, Hispanic, Asian-American or Arab-American.