Live theater always reflects the moment in which it’s presented, but this season, Broadway charged head-on into the politics of today with unusual force: A play that directly addressed antisemitism, Israel and Gaza opened barely two months after the events of Oct. 7; climate protestors interrupted a 140-year-old drama about the threat of environmental calamity, and an onstage chronicle of Vladimir Putin’s rise to power opened even as the Russian invasion of Ukraine rolled into its third year. Yet amid all its contemporary resonance, the 2023-24 slate of Tony nominees is equally dominated by one of the oldest forms of modern drama — the family play, now held up to view through an array of contemporary lenses.
And often this season, the most intimate family stories were also the most searingly political. “Family has always been the American premium in drama, and I think what’s special about family for Americans is it’s where politics begin,” says writer Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, whose play “Appropriate” is nominated for eight awards including best play revival. “Your first social unit is your family.
They’re inseparable.” In “Appropriate,” Jacobs-Jenkins employs the scaffolding of a textbook American drama — a white family returns home to a decaying estate to sort through the belongings of a dead patriarch — to excavate the legacy of racism and slavery that tends to go unspoken in these stories. Although the play first premiered a decade ago, criti.
