Leopoldstadt, play on anti-Semitism, crowned at the Tony Awards

A play by veteran Tom Stoppard, Leopoldstadt, about a Jewish family during the Holocaust and a musical about a teenager who is aging too quickly have won the most coveted awards at the Tony Awards, equivalent to the Oscars on Broadway in New York. Leopoldstadt obtained four awards, including that of the best play, a new consecration in the long career of the 85-year-old British playwright. “I'm overwhelmed by emotions that a chatbot couldn't understand,” he joked on stage, ironically about the boom in artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT, which some fear threaten creation. artistic. Like other winners of the evening, he also took advantage of his speech to pay tribute to the authors, in the midst of a strike by Hollywood screenwriters, who are fighting for better remuneration and a fairer sharing of profits from streaming platforms.

Tom Stoppard, co-screenwriter of Brazil (1985) and Shakespeare in Love (1998) which had given him an Oscar, won a fifth Tony with Leopoldstadt, one of his most personal works, he whose four grandparents died in the camps of focus. The play follows, in five acts, from 1899 to 1955 the journey of a wealthy Jewish family living in Vienna, whose destiny will be turned upside down by the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust.

Another work on anti-Semitism, Parade, which chronicles the trial and lynching of an American Jew in the 1910s in the American South, received awards for Best Direction and Best Revival for A musical.

The other prestigious award of the evening, that of the best musical, went to Kimberly Akimbo, who won five Tony Awards. It tells the story of a teenager affected by a rare disease that causes her to age prematurely.

In one of the most distinguished categories, the prize for best actress in a play was awarded to Jodie Comer, known to series fans for her role as Villanelle in Killing Eve, and rewarded for her burning one-woman -show Prima Face. The work tells the story of a lawyer who defends sexual aggressors, until she is confronted with such an attack herself. She competed in particular against Jessica Chastain (A doll's house).

For the first time, non-binary comedians Axel Newell (Best Supporting Actor in a Musical) and J. Harrisson Ghee (Best Actor in a Musical) won awards. The 76th Tony Awards, broadcast on CBS and presented by comedian Ariana DeBose, concluded the first full season for Broadway since the Covid-19 pandemic forced theaters to close for 18 months.

From May 2022 to May 2023, with 40 new productions, the theaters of Broadway, cultural and tourist lung around Times Square, attracted 12.2 million spectators and generated receipts of 1.5 billion dollars, recently indicated the Broadway League, which represents 41 theaters. In 2018-2019, Broadway had attracted 14.7 million spectators and brought in more than $1.8 billion in revenue. The season was notably marked by the closing of Broadway's oldest musical, The Phantom of the Opera, which lowered the curtain after 13,981 performances in 35 years, victim of audiences that were too low on the return of the pandemic.