Theatre review: Leopoldstadt

Widely regarded as England's greatest living male playwright, Tom Stoppard has suggested that Leopoldstadt will be his final play*, which has inevitably meant a lot of attention on Patrick Marber’s premiere production – the Wyndham’s had the “House Full” sign out tonight. It’s a broadly epic sweep over the life of an extended Jewish family in Vienna during the first half of the 20th century, opening and closing with scenes between men with contrasting views of their place in the world and the significance of their heritage. In 1899 Hermann (Adrian Scarborough) is the head of the wealthy Merz family, owner of a textile factory that’s benefited from the trade routes of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and, compared to the treatment of Jews in the century just ending, he sees the Vienna of his time as a progressive city where he can integrate. In fact there’s a Christmas tree in the opening scene, because Hermann converted to Christianity to marry Gretl (Faye Castelow.)

His brother-in-law Ludwig (Ed Stoppard) on the other hand remains cautious, acutely aware of the discrimination they still face and the resentment among many Austrians; a mathematician, he only really finds comfort in numbers and patterns.

The play takes its title from a former Jewish ghetto in Vienna that Hermann is glad to have seen the back of, but which in the decades to come could end up being a place his family will need again. But long before then his confidence in how well-accepted he is in Viennese society is misplaced, as Gretl is having an affair with Fritz (Luke Thallon in trousers with braces but no shirt,) an antisemitic officer who takes particular pleasure in goading Hermann in public. Ironically, this affair is something the family will be able to turn to life-saving advantage later, as the action jumps forward to 1924, and the growing tensions as Austria faces sanctions post-World War I; then Kristallnacht in 1938, with the remaining extended family staying together in the apartment for safety that won’t last long.

With a large adult cast, some of them doubling roles, plus multiple child actors, this is a sweeping look over the whole family as it’s brutally diminished by the 20th century, rather than a specific narrative. We’re not expected to follow the details of how everyone’s related: In a running joke characters describe their convoluted relationship to each other – “he’s my wife’s brother’s brother-in-law's cousin’s husband” – while in a more serious vein there’s a recurring focus on the importance of keeping records of the dead in photo albums and family trees before they fall out of living memory. Leopoldstadt really is a play of running themes, like the one of integration and mixed Jewish heritage as seen by the Christmas tree at the opening: Hermann may be a convert to Christianity, and the different members of the family have different perspectives on how much they identify as Jewish religiously or culturally, but once the Nazis are in charge the distinctions are meaningless.

The issue of how Jewish the characters feel is also relevant in the final scene as the few remaining members of the third generation of Merzes return to the house in 1955. Nathan (Sebastian Armesto) was one of the few to stay in Austria and actually survive, while Rosa (Jenna Augen) had to watch from America as her attempts to bring the family over as refugees failed, so both have been intensely and personally traumatised by WWII. But Leo (Thallon,) like Stoppard himself, had been brought to England by his stepfather, given a new name and been cut off from his Jewish identity for his own safety‡, and his relatives are horrified by his lack of connection to his past. Despite the intensity of the 1938 scene, it’s this final one that’s the most emotional, as Leo reconnects with suppressed memories of his childhood as well as how much of his family he’s lost. Stoppard is a writer known for intellectual rather than emotional focus, and he does throw in a lot of discussion of politics, mathematics and identity, but he has landed on a way of making the audience care about a whole family rather than a single protagonist, and for a play that deals with heavy subjects this is involving and moving.

Leopoldstadt by Tom Stoppard is booking until the 13th of June at Wyndham’s Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 35 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Marc Brenner.

*not necessarily in any hugely symbolic way I don’t think, more in a “he’s 82 and it takes him a few years to write a play” way

‡apparently for most of his life Stoppard was only aware of having some Jewish ancestry, and only found out he was 100% Jewish in the 1990s