Nominations for Jews on and off stage at Tonys

Applauded: David Adjmi’s

AMERICAN PLAYWRIGHT David Adjmi’s Broadway-debut Stereophonic received a record 13 nominations at the Tony Awards this week.

The drama about an unnamed 1970s band became the most nominated play in the Tonys’ 77-year history when it picked up nominations including best new play, best featured actor for three of its cast including Eli Gelb (The Squid and the Whale) and best director for London-born Daniel Aukin.

The theme of antisemitism featured in three shows nominated for this year’s Tonys, most famously in the revived Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club. The play is up for eight awards including best revival of a musical, best featured actress for Bebe Neuwirth, and best featured actor for Steven Skybell who played fruit-seller Herr Schultz.

Nominated for best play, Prayer for the French Republic focuses on five successive generations of a French Jewish family and their struggles with antisemitism and resulting deliberations received a record 13 nominations

over making aliyah. Josh Harmon’s play – which won the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for best new off-Broadway play in 2022 – has three Tony nominations, including lead actress for Betsy Aidem, who plays the present-day matriarch. Lempicka, about the Polish-Jewish portraitist who died in 1980, received two actor nominations.

Other nominated playwrights include Amy Herzog and Shaina Taub, whose Suffs is up for best musical and direction. Herzog’s semi-autobiographical Mary Jane includes a Chasidic character and is nominated for best new play and direction (Anne Kaufman); while her adaptation of An Enemy of the People, directed by her husband Sam Gold, is up for five awards including best revival.There were nominations for big-name Jewish actors too, including Daniel Radcliffe for the musical Merrily We Roll Along, Liev Schreiber for Doubt: A Parable and Michael Stuhlbarg for Patriots.

The ceremony takes place on June 16 at Lincoln Centre in New York.