ToughPigs Takes On the Tony Awards

For the last eight years, ToughPigs has celebrated the Academy Awards by predicting who will win based on their Muppet connections. But did you know that the Oscars aren’t the only awards show in existence? In fact, did you know that movies aren’t the only form of entertainment that uses actors, directors, writers and musicians? Yes, take out the cameras and the ability to do multiple takes and you’ve got yourself some live theater, and as film has Hollywood, theater has Broadway. And this Sunday, the best of Broadway will be celebrated with the Tony Awards.

So why am I talking about this on a Muppet fan site? Well, as it turns out, there are quite a few nominees this year with some deep Muppet and Henson connections. And as we all know, the Muppets only work with the best people, and if they’re the best, then they should easily win Tony Awards. And since we managed to correctly predict all four acting categories and Best Picture at the Oscars this year, let’s try our luck with Broadway’s brightest!

Here are our picks for this year’s Tony Awards!

Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play

Andrew Garfield for Angels in America
Tom Hollander for Travesties
Jamie Parker for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
Mark Rylance for Farinelli and the King
Denzel Washington for The Iceman Cometh

Wow, a completely different awards show, and Denzel Washington is still nominated. That guy’s good! Good enough to appear on Sesame Street back in 1989 as the Grouch poet laureate. And look out, but we have two Spider-Men on the ballot! Wait a minute… that says Tom Hollander. Never mind. Oh wait… Tom Hollander appeared as the corrupt Dublin theater manager in Muppets Most Wanted! And since we’ve already picked Washington on our Oscar predictions, I’ll say that Hollander takes the Tony (and he doesn’t even have to give out free tickets)!

Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play

Glenda Jackson for Three Tall Women
Condola Rashad for Saint Joan
Lauren Ridloff for Children of a Lesser God
Amy Schumer for Meteor Shower

Let’s see… on her TV show, Inside Amy Schumer, Schumer recreated the “Fever” number from The Muppet Show, and Meteor Shower was written by longtime friend of the Muppets, Steve Martin, but still, tangential Muppet connections don’t compare to a Muppet Show guest star. Glenda Jackson may have hijacked the Muppet Theater and converted it to a pirate ship, but we’ll still give the Dread Pirate Jackson the nod to take her booty. (She may not win it, but she’ll certainly take it.)

Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical

Harry Hadden-Paton for My Fair Lady
Joshua Henry for Carousel
Tony Shalhoub for The Band’s Visit
Ethan Slater for SpongeBob SquarePants

There’s only on nominee on here with a Henson connection, and that’s Shalhoub, who voiced Jerry Valentine in the Dinosaurs episode “Fran Live.” It’s a connection that goes way back (and I mean way back – 65 million years to be exact).

Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical

Lauren Ambrose for My Fair Lady
Hailey Kilgore for Once on This Island
LaChanze for Summer: The Donna Summer Musical
Katrina Lenk for The Band’s Visit
Taylor Louderman for Mean Girls
Jessie Mueller for Carousel

Another category with a sole Henson connection: Ambrose, who voiced KW in the Creature Shop film Where the Wild Things Are. Remember that film? Yeah, me neither. But it’s a connection nonetheless, and it’s good enough for a Tony win.

Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play

Anthony Boyle for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
Michael Cera for Lobby Hero
Brian Tyree Henry for Lobby Hero
Nathan Lane for Angels in America
David Morse for The Iceman Cometh

This may be another category with only one Muppet-connected nominee, but what connections! That’s right, Nathan Lane is in the category of having worked with the Muppet Show characters, appeared on Sesame Street, and starred in movies with effects by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop! Lane has sang “Sing” with the Oinker Sisters, starred in the Creature Shop films Stuart Little 2 and the 2005 version of The Producers, and was rude to the Muppets as Officer Meany in A Muppets Christmas: Letters to Santa. If that doesn’t prove he deserves a Tony Award, what does? His performance in the play for which he’s nominated? Don’t make me laugh.

Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play

Susan Brown for Angels in America
Noma Dumezweni for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
Deborah Findlay for The Children
Denise Gough for Angels in America
Laurie Metcalf for Three Tall Women

Okay, I have to be honest here, I honestly thought that by now, Laurie Metcalf must have worked with the Muppets. But sadly, no one here has any connections, so I’ll give it to Dumezweni for her performance as Hermione Granger, because Sesame Street has parodied and mentioned Harry Potter a few times, including the time Abby Cadabby read a copy of Furry Potter and the Goblet of Fur. It seems like a show a magical fairy would like.

Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical

Norbert Leo Butz for My Fair Lady
Alexander Gemignani for Carousel
Grey Henson for Mean Girls
Gavin Lee for SpongeBob SquarePants
Ari’el Stachel for The Band’s Visit

No Muppet connections here either, so this will turn out to be a matter of what Muppet names I can find in the names of the nominees. Let’s see… there’s a “Bert” in Norbert, Gemignani has a “Nani,” the name of Big Bird’s aunt, Lee has the same last name as Will Lee, forever our Mr. Hooper… but this one has to go to Grey Henson. Because Henson.

Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical

Ariana DeBose for Summer: The Donna Summer Musical
Renée Fleming for Carousel
Lindsay Mendez for Carousel
Ashley Park for Mean Girls
Diana Rigg for My Fair Lady

And we’re back to having Muppet connections. (Phew!) Fleming sang opera about counting to five on Sesame Street back in 2001, but in her role as Lady Holiday in The Great Muppet Caper, Diana Rigg had her diamonds stolen by her own brother (twice!), her identity borrowed by Miss Piggy, and she (unknowingly) falsely accuses Piggy of stealing her necklace! Hopefully, a Tony will make up for her troubles. Plus, she’s fantastic at delivering plot exposition, and you know, that has to go somewhere.

Best Book of a Musical

Itamar Moses for The Band’s Visit
Jennifer Lee for Frozen
Tina Fey for Mean Girls
Kyle Jarrow for SpongeBob SquarePants

Okay, relax, Muppet fans; this isn’t the same Jennifer Lee that played Bootsie on The Jim Henson Hour. I know that’s what you were all thinking. But this is the same Tina Fey that led the Bookaneers on Sesame Street (two pirates in the same award show!) and kept Kermit stuck in Gulag 38B as Nadya in Muppets Most Wanted! I’m thinking Fey is bringing home the Tony to The Big House. (Meaning her house, not the gulag. I mean, I’m sure she has a decently-sized abode.)

Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre

Adrian Sutton for Angels in America
David Yazbek for The Band’s Visit
Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Bobby Lopez for Frozen
Jeff Richmond and Nell Benjamin for Mean Girls
Yolanda Adams, Steven Tyler & Joe Perry, Sara Bareilles, Jonathan Coulton, Alex Ebert, The Flaming Lips, Lady Antebellum, Cyndi Lauper & Rob Hyman, John Legend, Panic! at the Disco, Plain White T’s, They Might Be Giants, T.I., Domani & Lil’C for SpongeBob Squarepants

Yeah, this is a tough one. David Yazbek, Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Bobby Lopez all wrote songs for Bear in the Big Blue House, Bobby Lopez also wrote songs for the abandoned project Kermit, Prince of Denmark, and Steven Tyler, Sara Bareilles, Lady Antebellum, Cyndi Lauper, John Legend, and Plain White T’s all have connections to the Muppets and/or Sesame Street. Can I predict a three-way tie? It’s my piece, so I’ll say yes.

Best Orchestrations

John Clancy for Mean Girls
Tom Kitt for SpongeBob SquarePants
Annmarie Milazzo and Michael Starobin for Once on This Island
Jamshied Sharifi for The Band’s Visit
Jonathan Tunick for Carousel

Tom Kitt? Did you say Tom Kitt? I’m sorry, did you say Tom “Wrote Three Whole Songs for Sesame Street” Kitt? Yeah, that’ll work.

Special Tony Award

Normally, I wouldn’t even bring these up, but this year, Special Tony Awards are being presented to John Leguizamo and Bruce Springsteen for their respective work in their one-man shows, Latin History for Morons and Springsteen on Broadway. Leguizamo played the human version of Captain Vegetable on Sesame Street in 2002, and Springsteen has been parodied by the Muppets and Sesame Street too many times to name here. So you can just imagine that Captain Vegetable and Bruce Stringbean are winning Tony Awards. Pretty cool, right?

Best Revival of a Play

Angels in America
Three Tall Women
The Iceman Cometh
Lobby Hero
Travesties

Hmm… Angels once appeared to Cookie Monster to remind him not to eat the pictures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art… in America, Statler and Waldorf would say the Muppets work exclusively in travesties, and in the annals of female Muppet performers, it’s hard to find one tall woman, much less three. I think I’ll give this one to Lobby Hero, because the title reminds me of Bobo working the KMUP security desk on Muppets Tonight, and Bobo’s a true hero of the lobby.

Best Revival of a Musical

Carousel
My Fair Lady
Once on This Island

The Muppets have performed two songs from Carousel; “You’ll Never Walk Alone” on The Muppet Show and “If I Loved You” on The Muppets (the TV show, not the movie), not to mention “Worm Soliloquy” on Sesame Street, a parody of the number “Soliloquy.” But when it comes to Muppet references, My Fair Lady wins, hands-down. The show and its songs have been parodied and featured so many times, that it would be impossible to recap them all here. So I’ll just leave a link to the show’s Muppet Wiki article right here, and that should be reason enough.

Best Play

The Children
Farinelli and the King
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
Junk
Latin History for Morons

For nearly five decades, the children have been the target audience of Sesame Street. But that’s not really enough. We’ve already discussed the various Harry Potter parodies the Muppets have done. But Junk… well, that sounds like a play Oscar the Grouch would see on opening night. And any play that can get that grouch to a Broadway theater deserves a Tony.

Best Musical

The Band’s Visit
Frozen
Mean Girls
SpongeBob SquarePants

This has got to be the hardest category of all. The Band’s Visit is clearly about The Electric Mayhem’s arrival in the desert to help Kermit and the gang get to Hollywood in The Muppet Movie. Frozen is the heartwarming story about this 15-second commercial for Muppets Most Wanted. Mean Girls is the cautionary tale about Darla, Marla, and Carla, three very mean girls indeed. But I’m going to give this one to SpongeBob SquarePants, because the titular character inspired one of Sesame Street’s greatest moments: TriangleBob TrianglePants. Truly, Tony-winning material. (TriangleBob TrianglePants, that is. Which surely deserved its own Tony.)

The Hosts

Sara Bareilles
Josh Groban

And if the nominees weren’t enough, we’ve got two hosts with Muppets on their resumes! Bareilles sang “Just Like Magic” with Abby Cadabby in a season 46 episode of Sesame Street, and served as the musical guest at the 2015 Sesame Workshop Benefit Gala, while Groban has been locked in a box for most of Muppets Most Wanted, sang “Pure Imagination” with the Muppets and Lindsey Stirling, got very friendly with Miss Piggy on The Muppets (again, the TV show, jeez these should have had better titles) and sang “Hey, Friend” with Elmo, Rosita, and Abby on Sesame Street just this past January! So yeah, if their Muppet works are any indication, we’re in for a very good show.

Be sure to tune in to the Tony Awards on Sunday, June 10^th to see how many of our Tony picks came true! (Or laugh at our complete futility in predicting. Either one’s good.)

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by Matthew Soberman