From The Winner's Circle: LEOPOLDSTADT's Brandon Uranowitz Celebrates His Tony Victory!

Brandon Uranowitz has won the 2023 Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play for Leopoldstadt. In his visit to the winner's room, Brandon celebrated the impact of Tom Stoppard's epic drama and reacted to his director, Patrick Marber's win in real time!

On working with Patrick Marber to create his performance he said, "When I walked into the audition room for Leopoldstadt I wasn't sure that I could do it. I don't know a lot of directors in this city who would have given me that chance. I've had a wonderful, amazing career and I consider myself deeply lucky, but I do think there are preconceived notions about people based on their body of work and the thing about Patrick is that he didn't know me that well."

He continued, "So I walked in with a clean slate and was able to prove to him what I was fully capable of. I had forgotten what I was capable of. He reminded me what I can do and he trusted me and gave me the space to find these characters as they live in me. Because of that trust and that space I have this. He reminded me of my potential that I had lost touch with. I'm deeply grateful for him." 

On the impact of Leopoldstadt, Brandon said, "This play is a clarion call to all of us to pay attention to those things that seem inconsequential but in their accumulation can lead to mass devastation. That comes from reminding people and never forgetting and continuing to tell this story, even if we feel like we know it. I guarantee you that you're wrong. There are 6 million people that we lost. That's 6 million stories. We can't possibly know all the details. So that's writ large what our play is about." 

Brandon Uranowitz is a 2019 Tony and Drama Desk Award nominee for his performance as Larry in the Broadway revival of Lanford Wilson’s Burn This. Brandon recently appeared as Leon Czolgosz in the 2021 off-Broadway revival of Assassins at CSC, directed by John Doyle. He previously received Tony Award nominations for his performances in An American in Paris and Falsettos. Other Broadway credits include The Band’s Visit, Prince of Broadway, and Baby, It’s You!. Screen credits include the films Here Today, The Kitchen, and Stage Fright, and television series “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “Fosse/Verdon,” “Dietland,” “Blue Bloods,” “Inside Amy Schumer” and “Law & Order: Criminal Intent.”

Leopoldstadt is currrently running at the Longacre Theatre through July 2, 2023. 

Vienna in 1900 was the most vibrant city in Europe, humming with artistic and intellectual excitement and a genius for enjoying life. A tenth of the population were Jews. A generation earlier they had been granted full civil rights by the Emperor, Franz Josef. Consequently, hundreds of thousands fled from the Pale and the pogroms in the East and many found sanctuary in the crowded tenements of the old Jewish quarter, Leopoldstadt. Tom Stoppard's passionate drama of love and endurance begins in the last days of 1899 and follows one extended family deep into the heart of the 20th Century.