Leopoldstadt is set among the Jewish community of Vienna in the first half of the 20th century and follows the lives of “a prosperous Jewish family who had fled the pogroms in the East”.
According to Tom Stoppard, the play “took a year to write, but the gestation was much longer. Quite a lot of it is personal to me, but I made it about a Viennese family so that it wouldn’t seem to be about me.” All four of Stoppard’s Jewish grandparents died in Nazi concentration camps.
The play begins in 1899 and we hear about the “acceptance” of Jews in Vienna. The large Jewish family seems happy but are unaware of the changes coming. In 1900, beautiful Gretl begins an affair with Fitz (who is anti-Semitic) that leads to dire implications for the family.
The action shifts to 1924 and the post World War I social and political order. Already some of the family members have lost their lives. The optimism the Jewish community shared erodes.
The true horror begins in 1935 as the Nazis burst into the ancestral home and terrorize the now poverty-stricken family. Concentration camps loom.
The play concludes in 1955 with the three remaining survivors of the Holocaust. We saw the family dwindle as Vienna became a toxic place for Jews in the first half of the 20th Century. Both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times have hailed Leopoldstadt as one of the best plays of the year. I agree. It’s a powerful, cautionary tale. GRADE: A
I’ll have to try to get this, at least read it.
As a German of course I feel with that family, still wondering how the Nazis managed to get so many Germans to believe them.
I may have written about this before:
My mother grew up in a small Schwab town on the river Neckar, near the Black Forest. In the state of Württemberg Jews had been (barely …) tolerated because some of the leading people knew that they needed their expertise and qualifications. So there was a village nearby where mainly Jews lived, some of their young girls went to high school (Gymnasium) with my mother and they became friends. She told me some funny stories like when she exchanged breakfast food with them:
She got their Matzen – and they enjoyed her liver sausage, though of course it was not kosher being made of pork.
And then some day in 1938 she didn’t see them anymore and heard that most of the Jews from Rexingen had left for Israel – the lucky ones!
Those that remained because they could not believe their German neighbours might be so ugly …
https://www.ehemalige-synagoge-rexingen.de/en/
Wolf, you’ll find LEOPOLDSTADT very moving. Watching the decimation of the Jewish family is painful to see.
I really admire a play about something important. His plays are. I have seen ARCADIA and THE REAL THING by Stoppard. I bet Jeff can outdo that.
Patti, I’ve been a Tom Stoppard fan since his Tony-winning play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. With so much empty plays and musicals today, watching LEOPOLDSTADT and feeling the sense of despair and fear as the Holocaust takes its deadly toll on a family of innocent Jews reminded me how power drama can be when done right.
Is that Rhea Perlman?
Steve, good guess, but Rhea Perlman is not in LEOPOLDSTADT. I suspect the actress is Cara Ballingall.
I’d like to see this one. Jackie has never been a Stoppard fan. We did see ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD (after studying it in a drama class in college we saw a revival in London), THE REAL INSPECTOR HOUND, JUMPERS (which Jackie disliked a lot), THE REAL THING and TRAVESTIES, though I’ve read several others.
Jeff, Diane and I love going to shows–musicals, dramas, comedies, etc.–but we particularly enjoy plays like LEOPOLDSTADT that make us THINK…and cry.
It’s been a while since a live play has really tempted me. When PROOF was on Broadway, that was perhaps the last time I was serious considering making the trip (Paltrow a poor substitute for Parker in the film).. Haven’t seen too much in Philadelphia that wasn’t opera, with the exception of something Alice was particularly amused to see, FROG AND TOAD ARE FRIENDS, as she loved the children’s books it was deftly based on.
I certainly did tear through as many Caedmon (and others’) 3- and 4-disc sets of audio staging of plays in late childhood and early adolescence as I could get hands and styli on, and have always read plays and caught them as staged and/or adpapted for a/v recordings (well, the Spoken Arts THE ZOO STORY was among the memorable items on one LP). Stoppard is consistently worthy.
The lives of our grandparents too often would make for some compelling tragedy. We might or might not assume we have our parents more fully understood…and then we, ourselves…
Todd, I’m with you on the Caedmon audio versions of plays. I loved SAINT JOAN with the incredible Siobhan McKenna! It’s still available on Apple Music.