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

The drama about an unnamed 70s band reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac 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. 

From a Syrian Jewish family in Brooklyn, Adjmi has written about his identity as Jewish and gay in previous work, and told online publication The Forward that he chose something different for Stereophonic, which was originally intended as a one-act play.

“I was very proud of this idea that in the time where everyone’s writing their ‘identities’, and fixating on their tribal identities, that I just relieved myself of that completely,” he said.

Daniel Radcliffe scored his first Tony nomination for the musical Merrily We Roll Along (Photo: Jeff Spicer/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures)

The theme of antisemitism features in three shows nominated for this year’s Tonys, most famously in the revived Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club, 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. The show, which opened at the West End in 2021, won a record-breaking seven Olivier Awards including best actor for Eddie Redmayne.

Noominated 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 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, touches on antisemitism and the rise of fascism, and 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, inspired by her elder daughter Frances, who was born with a muscular disease and died aged 11 last year, includes a Hasidic 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 and lead actor for Jeremy Strong, the Emmy-winning star of Succession.

There were nominations for big-name Jewish actors, too: Daniel Radcliffe scored his first Tony nomination for the musical Merrily We Roll Along, Liev Schreiber for Doubt: A Parable, and Michael Stuhlbarg for his role as Boris Berezovsky in Patriots.

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