New York (AFP) – Broadway musicals based on movies “Mean Girls” and “SpongeBob SquarePants” led nominations for the Tony Awards in New York on Tuesday with 12 nods each for the equivalent of the Oscars for theater.
The star-studded 72nd annual Tony Awards, the biggest night in Broadway, will be held on June 10 with singers Sara Bareilles and Josh Groban as co-hosts.
Last year’s event was anchored by the now disgraced Oscar-winning Kevin Spacey, whose career was ruined by sexual misconduct allegations as part of the #MeToo cultural watershed sweeping the United States.
“The Band’s Visit,” a heart-warming musical about Egyptian musicians visiting Israel, “Angels in America,” set against the 1980s AIDS crisis, and a revival of Rogers and Hammerstein’s “Carousel” all scooped 11 nominations apiece.
London transplant “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts One and Two” was nominated for 10 awards as was a Broadway revival of “My Fair Lady” re-interpreted for a #MeToo, post-feminist New York audience.
A revival of Eugene O’Neill’s classic “The Iceman Cometh” got eight nods, including best actor for double Oscar-winner Denzel Washington.
Other British imports, “Farinelli and The King,” starring Oscar winner Mark Rylance, was nominated for five gongs and Tom Stoppard play “Travesties,” starring Tom Hollander, for four.
Bruce Springsteen will also be honored for his Broadway run, one of the hottest tickets in New York this season, and British composer and musical impressario Andrew Lloyd Webber will be handed a lifetime achievement award.
Glenda Jackson and Amy Schumer were among the nominees for best actress in a leading role in a play for “Three Tall Women” and “Meteor Shower,” respectively.
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