Sir Tom Stoppard’s epic play about his family’s traumatic travels through the first half of the 20th century was always going to be worth revisiting.
Leopoldstadt opened to acclaim, was cruelly closed by the pandemic, returned after a five-month interregnum during which this online version was filmed and then headed to Broadway. However, nobody could have guessed that in just four years, so much of its subject matter would have acquired significantly different resonance.
By the opening scenes in a large living room in December 1899, the family that would beget a theatrical genius several generations later was in transformation. As such, it was representative of so many affluent Jewish residents of Vienna, seeking to assimilate while maintaining some traditions, symbolically demonstrated by a Christmas tree graced by a Star of David.
Older members were still aware of the dreadful anti-Semitism that they or their parents suffered, first during terrifying pogroms that forced them to flee from what would later become Ukraine and subsequently in the ghetto that was Leopoldstadt, while those of the next generation were exploring business, mathematics, psychoanalysis, the arts and so much more.
This inevitably offered opportunities for much intellectual Stoppardian debate a la Coast of Utopia but on a smaller scale, including a fiery discussion about whether making a homeland in Palestine was realistic or likely to be of benefit.
The play cleverly encapsulates so much of the Jewish predicament through the behaviour of a daughter-in-law, Faye Castelow’s Gretl, wife to industrialist and social climber Hermann, played by James McArdle, a man who fervently believes that he has overcome the Viennese anti-Semitism until her casual dalliance with an officer exposes a sad truth.
By 1924, like their homeland, the family has been depleted and damaged by a world war and Austria is in the throes of political upheaval, though whether the Marxists or National Socialists will triumph remains uncertain.
Jump forward to 1938 and war once again looms as the extended family fights for survival, even if its members don’t necessarily realise the level of threat. As the scene opens, it seems that the worst has arrived when widowed Hannah’s fiancé Sam Hoare as Percy an English journalist exhorts family members to flee before it is too late. The storming intercession of Nazi officers confirms the terror to come but, in their different ways, Hermann and his brother-in-law Ernst played by Aaron Neil show quiet defiance.
The final Act in 1955 is literally a post-mortem. Most of the remaining members of the family, Jenna Augen as Rosa, who had been a child in the opening scenes, together with bitter concentration camp survivor Nathan and suave English writer Leo, respectively Sebastien Armesto and Luke Thallon, from the next generation down fortuitously meet and gradually unpack memories of their lost relatives. In doing so, they bring home the horrors of the concentration camps, but also concerns that man’s inhumanity to man could be repeated in future.
Patrick Marber expertly marshals a large cast across time and, to a lesser extent, the world, ensuring that messages which could easily dissipate come across loud and clear. A second viewing confirms that Leopoldstadt is a very special work, filled with Tom Stoppard’s wit and erudition but also shining a light on the Jewish experience in Europe across the last century.
Seeing this thought-provoking work in the context of a war in the Middle East and constant concerns about anti-Semitism much closer to home, one discovers the extent to which it not only perfectly evokes the past but also speaks volumes about the world today.
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