PAUL: Best Musical is arguably the biggest prize on Tony night.
A win in the category not only cements a musical’s place in theater history, but it usually boosts
ticket sales and increases the show’s future life on Broadway and beyond.
Plus, it looks incredible on a marquee!
The four nominated musicals this year exhibit great diversity.
Let’s take a look.
PAUL V/O: Leading the race for Best Musical are two shows which have each received a stunning
12 nominations: MEAN GIRLS and SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS.
First up: everyone’s favorite under the sea friend.
[Music] PAUL V/O: Turning SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS, the
popular Nickelodeon 11-minute cartoon series into a full Broadway musical was an enormous
task for its creative team.
Producers first hired visionary director Tina Landau, who wanted to create a show that would
appeal to both die-hard fans as well as newcomers to the denizens of Bikini Bottom, the cartoon’s
outrageously named sea setting.
Writer Kyle Jarrow thought the best way in was to write a universal story about SpongeBob
and his friends having to come together to deal with a crisis.
I pitched them this idea.
Like what if it’s the end of the world?
It’s like Armageddon meets OUR TOWN meets SpongeBob.
PAUL V/O: The story, which centers around an about-to-blow volcano, not only gives the
musical its structure, but provides a clever parallel to the problems of the real world
for audiences to grasp onto.
--It’s about the need for us all to overcome our fear and come together and live joyfully
in the best day ever which is which day we have.
--If you want to, you can look at the script and go, ‘Oh it’s saying things about our
world and how communities are reacting to each other.
PAUL V/O: The show’s score is by an amazing list of pop and rock stars who contributed
songs, receiving a shared Tony nomination for Best Original Score.
Also nominated is star Ethan Slater, making his debut as the title sponge.
["Hero is My Middle Name"] --For Slater, a die-hard fan of the Nickelodeon
series, the show’s message is king.
--Something really cool that my fiancé said to me the other day was She’s aid it’s
really special that you get to save the world every night because this is a world that often
feels like it needs saving for different reasons and it’s a really special thing not just
for me but to get to share with this company and audience is saving the world through this
message of love and community eight shows a week.
["It Roars" from Mean Girls] PAUL V/O: MEAN GIRLS is a Broadway musical
comedy that seems custom made for the film’s fans.
In fact, die hard devotees of Tina Fey’s hilarious 2004 film, in which Lindsay Lohan
played a new arrival navigating high school social cliques, have long demanded a Broadway
adaptation.
Finally, Fey made dreams come true with this season’s stage adaptation, which she never
considered starring in herself, by the way.
--Not a good singer, guys, but I'm a worse dancer.
So, this has been dream to write for Broadway
for sure…
PAUL V/O: For the musical, Fey collaborated with her husband, composer Jeff Richmond and
lyricist Nell Benjamin, who explored similar territory in Broadway’s LEGALLY BLONDE.
For a director/choreographer, they enlisted musical hitmaker Casey Nicholaw, who was delighted
to learn the 14-year-old movie still had bite and could appeal to a wider audience than
film fans that know Fey’s funniest lines by heart.
--It feels good.
It feels like it’s really relevant right now, without feeling like oh we’re gonna
update everything and change everything.
I think it stays truthful to the movie and has the spirit of the movie but it’s stage-worthy
now.
PAUL V/O: On Broadway, MEAN GIRLS ends on a positive high, teaching high school kids
some good take-aways about acceptance.
--I love that we hit that message home a little bit harder with the musical.
not apologize for who you are want to be and not everybody gets along but we all have to
treat each other with dignity because one’s dignity is not negotiable.
I don’t care who you are.
["Omar Sharif from The Band's Visit] --PAUL V/O: After winning multiple Best Musical
prizes during its off-Broadway run at the Atlantic Theater company, THE BAND’S VISIT
has been honored with a total of 11 Tony nominations including Best Musical.
The show’s quiet story about members of an Egyptian police orchestra who find themselves
stranded in a small Israeli town was first seen in a 2007 film that inspired four-time
Tony nominated composer David Yazbek.
--I saw the movie and was left so deeply moved by the film and I couldn’t figure out exactly
why.
And I love movies like that.
What just happened?
But It haunted me and I just kept thinking if we can reach that emotional place, we will
have done something that people don’t do in musicals.
--The show has a really gentle tone, the film does, the score does.
The world of these characters and the story we’ve created has a gentle, quiet quality
to it.
[music] --It’s an unlikely Broadway show.
It hinges a lot on silences and looks and what’s going on internally.
But the characters even though we see them in short vignettes, we’re invested in them.
--People feel instantly like they can relate to these characters, and they’re instantly
taking to a place they’re completely unfamiliar with.
--PAUL V/O: For librettist Itamar Moses, making his Broadway debut with the musical, THE BAND’S
VISIT is simply a testament to the power of human connection.
--The show is a great reminder of the wonderful things that can happen if we say yes to something
rather than no, if we welcome strangers rather than shut them out.
In a way, strangers are the clearest mirror in which we can see ourselves.
When we shut out the stranger we’re actually shutting out what we don’t want to know
about ourselves.
["Let It Go"] PAUL V/O: The fourth musical in the race is
Frozen, earning three nominations in total include
nods for composers Kristen Anderson Lopez and Robert Lopez and librettist Jennifer Lee,
who all first collaborated on the 2014 movie, the highest grossing animated film of ALL
TIME.
Lopez, an EGOT icon who previously won three Tonys for his work on the Best Musical smashes
AVENUE Q and THE BOOK OF MORMON, was hooked on the story of sisters Elsa and Anna when
he first got offered the film project.
--They called me in Disney animation and pitched me this story and they showed me these images
of two young girls, sisters and the older one was doing all this magic and the younger
one was just in awe.
I just thought Kristen’s gonna love this and we have to do it together.
-- Jennifer Lee, the co-director and writer of the film, is Tony-nominated for adapting
her screenplay into the book of the musical.
And after winning an Oscar for the musical’s standout power solo “Let It Go,” the married
songwriters expanded their FROZEN score from 7 songs to 23.
-- We worked very hard to take this story that we knew resonated with people and make
it theatrical and use music to tell that theatrical story.”
-- We love to dive into the DNA of the movie songs and use it to make new songs.
That was the fun part for me.
--Which of this season’s nominees will join other still-running Best Musical Tony winners
THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, KINKY BOOTS, HAMILTON and DEAR EVAN HANSEN?
Tune in on Tony Sunday to find out!