Tom Stoppard's “Leopoldstadt” took home the award for best play at the 2023 Tony Awards, handed out on Sunday night at the United Palace in Washington Heights. The intergenerational drama - set in Vienna between the turn of the century and 1955 - prominently features a Nazi-looted portrait of Gustav Klimt.
The oil painting appearing on stage is actually the work of British artist Felicity Gill, a figurative painter who has exhibited work at Turner Contemporary in Kent, the Royal Academy in London and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. Previously, his most high-profile commission had been a portrait of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson during his time as Mayor of London - although Gill also painted the works of Jean Michel-Basquiat for the recent West End and Broadway production, “The Collaboration.”
“I loved Klimt's work when I was at school and painted several Klimt-ish portraits, so the Leopoldstadt commission was a dream job,” Gill told Artnet News in an email. “It was a challenge to produce Klimt's detailed style in a format suitable for the theater – he used multiple colors to create skin tones, for example – and yet the portrait had to work from a distance as seen on stage.”
Originally titled Portrait of Margarete Merz, the painting is now the jewel of Vienna's Belvedere gallery.
The play's victory on the awards night was historic, as the fifth win in the best play category for Stoppard. The playwright, now 85, was already the record holder with wins for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1968), Travesties (1976), The Real Thing (1984) and The Coast of Utopia (2007).
Stoppard drew on his own personal story for the production. Born Tomáš Sträussler, he was just 18 months old when his Jewish parents fled Czechoslovakia for Singapore in 1938. Like the character Leo Chamberlain (Arty Froushan) - born Leo Rosenbaum, who escaped Vienna and did not return home until 1955 - Stoppard changed He moved to England at the age of eight and was adopted by an Englishman, leaving him with little connection to his Jewish heritage.
The play is “autobiographical without really being an autobiographical play,” Stoppard, who was 50 when she learned that all four of her grandparents were killed in the Holocaust, told the New York Times. “But elements of it are completely taken from life.”
Leopoldstadt previously won the 2020 Olivier Award for best play after its premiere in London. The Broadway production, which opened last fall, ends July 2.
It also secured awards for best director for Patrick Marber, best actor for Brandon Uranowitz and best costume design for Brigitte Reiffenstuel. Hudson was also nominated for set design.