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(JTA) – Broadway made an announcement about antisemitism Sunday night, as two high-profile reveals on the topic this season — the play “Leopoldstadt” and the musical revival “Parade” — pulled in a number of main Tony awards.
Among the reveals’ honorees, in flip, made statements of their very own linking hatred of Jews with different types of hatred, together with homophobia and anti-transgender sentiment at a time when trans inclusion is below assault in lots of locations.
“Leopoldstadt,” Tom Stoppard’s epic semi-autobiographical play about three generations of a Viennese Jewish household earlier than and after the Holocaust, received 4 of the six Tonys for which it was nominated, together with finest play. (It was Stoppard’s fifth Tony, coming 55 years after his first, for “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Lifeless.”)
The “Leopoldstadt” actor Brandon Uranowitz, the one member of the play’s massive forged to obtain an appearing nomination, received for featured actor in a play and thanked Stoppard for writing a present about antisemitism and “the false promise of assimilation.” He famous that members of his household have been murdered by the Nazis in Poland.
Uranowitz, who’s homosexual, ended with a plea to oldsters: “When your little one tells you who they’re, imagine them.”
“Parade,” concerning the 1915 lynching of American Jew Leo Frank, received two prizes, together with finest revival of a musical. Alfred Uhry, who wrote the ebook to the unique 1998 manufacturing of “Parade,” wore a Star of David lapel pin when he got here as much as settle for the award for finest revival.
Michael Arden, the present’s director, famous in his speech that Leo Frank had “a life that was reduce quick by the hands of the assumption that one group of individuals is kind of beneficial than one other,” which he famous is “on the core of antisemitism, of white supremacy, of homophobia, of transphobia, of intolerance of any form.”
Arden warned the group to be taught the teachings of the present, “or else we’re doomed to repeat the horrors of our historical past.” He concluded his speech with an expletive, bleeped out by the telecast, as he voiced his help of trans and nonbinary youth.
Whereas “Parade” took the highest prize, in addition to finest director of a musical, its Jewish stars Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond each misplaced out of their classes — Platt to “Some Like It Sizzling” star J. Harrison Ghee, and Diamond to “Kimberly Akimbo” star Victoria Clark. However Platt and Diamond did share a second onstage, performing the “Parade” quantity “This Is Not Over But” in character as an imprisoned Frank and his spouse Lucille.
The non-Jewish actor Sean Hayes received finest actor in a play for his position as Oscar Levant, the real-life Jewish live performance pianist, actor and entertainer who had lifelong struggles with psychological sickness, in “Good Evening, Oscar.”
“This has bought to be the primary time an Oscar received a Tony,” Hayes quipped, including that Levant’s “wit and irascibility and virtuosity just isn’t solely inspirational however a real authentic.”
There have been a number of different Jewish moments on the present. Jewish Broadway legends John Kander (96 years outdated) and Joel Gray (91 years outdated) acquired the night’s lifetime achievement awards, with Gray’s actress daughter Jennifer Gray presenting him together with his honor. Among the many pair’s many achievements: Kander composed and Gray starred in “Cabaret,” a musical set in Weimar-era Germany, and Gray mounted the latest profitable Yiddish-language revival of “Fiddler on the Roof.” Kander can also be the composer behind “New York, New York,” a brand new present whose musician characters embody a Jewish refugee from Nazi-occupied Poland.
Miriam Silverman received the featured actress in a play award for her position in “The Check in Sidney Brustein’s Window,” a revival of a long-overlooked Lorraine Hansberry play a few Jewish bohemian couple in Sixties Greenwich Village.
Lea Michele, regardless of not being eligible for a Tony for taking up for Beanie Feldstein in “Humorous Woman,” carried out her signature tune from the present concerning the Jewish comic Fanny Brice. “A Lovely Noise,” a biographical jukebox musical about chart-topping Jewish pop crooner Neil Diamond, additionally snuck in a efficiency of “Candy Caroline” regardless of not being nominated for something. The group gamely sang alongside.
And an sudden Jewish shoutout got here close to the tip of the ceremony, when the forged of the musical comedy “Shucked,” a present about corn, carried out a track instructing viewers concerning the many locations the place the vegetable will be loved. Among the many choices: “Deliver it to a bris!”
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