Broadway made a statement about antisemitism Sunday evening, June 11, as two high-profile shows on the subject this season the play Leopoldstadt and the musical revival Parade pulled in multiple major Tony awards.

Some of the shows honorees, in turn, made statements of their own linking hatred of Jews with other forms of hatred, including homophobia and anti-transgender sentiment.

Leopoldstadt, Tom Stoppards epic semi-autobiographical play about three generations of a Viennese Jewish family before and after the Holocaust, won four of the six Tonys for which it was nominated, including best play. (It was Stoppards fifth Tony, coming 55 years after his first, for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.)

The Leopoldstadt actor Brandon Uranowitz, the only member of the plays large cast to receive an acting nomination, won for featured actor in a play and thanked Stoppard for writing a show about antisemitism and the false promise of assimilation. He noted that members of his family were murdered by the Nazis in Poland.

Uranowitz, who is gay, ended with a plea to parents: When your child tells you who they are, believe them.

Parade, about the 1915 lynching of American Jew Leo Frank, won two prizes, including best revival of a musical. Alfred Uhry, who wrote the book to the original 1998 production of Parade, wore a Star of David lapel pin when he came up to accept the award for best revival.

Michael Arden, the shows director, noted in his speech that Leo Frank had a life that was cut short at the hands of the belief that one group of people is more or less valuable than another, which he noted is at the core of antisemitism, of white supremacy, of homophobia, of transphobia, of intolerance of any kind.

Arden warned the crowd to learn the lessons of the show, or else we are doomed to repeat the horrors of our history.

The non-Jewish actor Sean Hayes won best actor in a play for his role as Oscar Levant, the real-life Jewish concert pianist, actor and entertainer who had lifelong struggles with mental illness, in Good Night, Oscar.

There were several other Jewish moments at the show. Jewish Broadway legends John Kander (96 years old) and Joel Grey (91 years old) received the evenings lifetime achievement awards, with Greys actress daughter Jennifer Grey presenting him with his honor. Among the pairs many achievements: Kander composed and Grey starred in Cabaret, a musical set in Weimar-era Germany, and Grey mounted the recent successful Yiddish-language revival of Fiddler on the Roof. Kander is also the composer behind New York, New York, a new show whose musician characters include a Jewish refugee from Nazi-occupied Poland.

Miriam Silverman won the featured actress in a play award for her role in The Sign in Sidney Brusteins Window, a revival of a long-overlooked Lorraine Hansberry play about a Jewish bohemian couple in 1960s Greenwich Village.

And an unexpected Jewish shoutout came near the end of the ceremony, when the cast of the musical comedy Shucked, a corny-looking show about corn, performed a song instructing viewers about the many places where the vegetable can be enjoyed. Among the options: Bring it to a bris!

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Antisemitism-themed Leopoldstadt and Parade are big Tony ... - jewishpresspinellas