Theater Review: “Leopoldstadt” — Bearing Witness
By Bill Marx
This is one of Tom Stoppard’s most heartfelt and expansive works, its poignant storyline inspired by events in his own life. The gamesmanship that mars some of his other scripts gives way to a sense of history writ large as well as a deeply humane understanding of different perspectives and their connections to identity.
Leopoldstadt by Tom Stoppard. Directed by Carey Perloff. Presented by the Huntington Theatre Company in association with DC’s Shakespeare Theatre Company at the Huntington Theatre, 264 Huntington Avenue, Boston, through October 13.
The cast of Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt at the Huntington Theatre. Photo: Liza Voll
The Arts Fuse has already taken two looks at Tom Stoppard’s 2020 historical drama, which follows the fortunes of a prosperous turn-of-the-century Jewish family in Vienna who, having fled the pogroms in the East, struggle through World War I and the rise of Nazism in the late ’30. The saga ends with a Cold War coda in the ’50s. Roberta Silman read the script and concluded that “this is a great work, more linear than Stoppard’s earlier dramas, yet filled with such intelligence and compassion that it will be read and seen for years and years, and perhaps, over time, be regarded as his richest, most haunting play.” In it, the playwright bears “witness to the seminal events of the 20th century that intersected with events in his own life. He is telling us in his unique way that we are all accidents of history, that geography is destiny, and that we all throw shadows behind us.” Christopher Caggiano saw the 2022 Broadway production of Leopoldstadt and found it to be a late career triumph. But he noted that the drama’s shattering conclusion had to surmount some flaws. The drawbacks include “characterizations that are disappointingly broad and blunt. The characters often feel like types rather than people, stand-ins for particular points of view rather than multifaceted beings. As such, there’s a surfeit of speechifying rather than conversation.”
After seeing the Huntington Theatre Company’s sturdy production, I fall somewhere in between these two evaluations. There’s little doubt that Leopoldstadt is one of Stoppard’s most heartfelt and expansive works, its poignant storyline inspired by events in the dramatist’s own life. The gamesmanship that mars too many of his other plays gives way to a sense of history writ large as well as a deeply humane understanding of different perspectives and their connections to identity. There is something at stake in these family discussions; the characters are not simply positioned to hash out Stoppard’s witty conceits. And the infernal darkness of the final two acts, with their intimations of a world ground down by debilitation, fear, despair, vanishing memories, moral cowardice, and authoritarian horror, is formidable. But reaching that point is a problem. Unlike Stoppard’s superior Arcadia, which moves with preternatural surety to its final scene, the structure of Leopoldstadt is lumpy, fitful, a bit of a grab bag.
Forefront (L to R): Brenda Meaney and Rachel Felstein in Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt at the Huntington Theatre. Photo: Liza Voll
Silman puts her finger on the issue in her review when she observes that “the working title for Leopoldstadt was The Family Album, which brought to mind F. Scott Fitzgerald’s observation that ‘the form of so many modern novels is less a progression than a series of impressions … like the slowly turned pages of an album.'” A play can’t match the discursive elasticity of a novel: as the decades flash by, Stoppard is duty bound to fill us in on new historical events and changing social contexts. There are speeches filled with factoid-studded political/economic overviews (some of them questionable), as well as arguments about assimilation (which takes a beating) versus Zionism, class conflict enabling nationalism, and lowdowns on Austria’s smooth slide into Nazism. Ken MacDonald’s handsome set and Alex Jaegey’s apt costumes are aided and abetted, somewhat clumsily, by large projections that bookmark major happenings — a few gritty images mark the arrival and end of WWI. Along with packing in chunks of info, Stoppard takes the easy way out when it comes to lightening things up: a bris has been a surefire laugh-getter from the Borscht Belt days. Finally, the stage is populated by many members of the Merz and Jakobovicz families: one of the play’s themes is the fragility of memory, and it is a challenge to keep the multiple characters and their relationships straight.
Leopoldstadt is at its most compelling when Stoppard makes use of what Aristotle in his Poetics calls anagnorisis. These are the moments when the truth of a matter dawns on a character, when events lead to their inevitable end, when mysteries are resolved. A reversal of fortune often follows illumination — along with an epiphany that deepens self-understanding. At times the audience can plainly see a truth the character can’t, and that heightens the pathos. Leopoldstadt‘s plot is far too complicated to summarize — that’s why Wikipedia was invented. But director Carey Perloff and the HTC performers are sensitive to the script’s adroit variations on anagnorisis, the moments when reality pulls the rug out from under the delusional assumptions the families make about their safety, domestic continuity, and stability, personal, physical, and political. The HTC performances are solid rather than flashy: Nael Nacer, Firdous Bamji, Mishka Yarovoy, Brenda Meaney, and Joshua Chessin-Yudin are the standouts.
Left to right: Holden King-Farbstein, Joshua Chessin-Yudin, Quinn Murphy, and Firdous Bamji in Leopoldstadt at the Huntington Theatre. Photo: Liza Voll
The play’s dramatization of the dehumanization that led to the Holocaust is depressingly relevant. In 2023, according to Reuters, the number of antisemitic incidents of assault, vandalism, and harassment hit a record high in America. As I write, Donald Trump announced American Jews would be partly to blame if he lost the election: he’s been so good to Israel, only bad Jews would vote for Kamala Harris. Dual loyalty is a standard antisemitic trope, and Stoppard’s drama probes that charge along with other facets of the scapegoating mindset, including how victims grapple with being “othered.”
HTC artistic director Loretta Greco’s welcoming note in the program raises an issue for theaters. She writes that Leopoldstadt “is a mirror held up to any community that has wrestled with the forces of erasure, be it through war, migration, or the relentless pressures of our global world.” True enough, but stage companies need to be free to produce work that reflects the experiences of all the marginalized communities currently under threat. A production of Midsummer Night’s Dream was just canceled at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, UK, because there were complaints about references in the show to the conflict in Gaza and trans rights. According to a story in the Guardian, “the source of the dispute was a song in the play, which referenced trans rights, and contained the phrase “free Palestine.” The show’s director, Stef O’Driscoll, claimed that the situation left the company feeling “devalued, invisible, problematic and unsafe.” Stoppard’s Broadway-applauded looking glass should be produced with the nuanced care taken by the HTC and the Shakespeare Theatre Company. But stage companies must also hold up other mirrors of war and eradication — from Ukraine, Sudan, Gaza, and Yemen — in which we will recognize ourselves.
Bill Marx is the editor-in-chief of the Arts Fuse. For four decades, he has written about arts and culture for print, broadcast, and online. He has regularly reviewed theater for National Public Radio Station WBUR and the Boston Globe. He created and edited WBUR Online Arts, a cultural webzine that in 2004 won an Online Journalism Award for Specialty Journalism. In 2007 he created the Arts Fuse, an online magazine dedicated to covering arts and culture in Boston and throughout New England.
Tagged: Brenda Meaney, Carey Perloff, Firdous Bamji, Huntington-Theatre-Company, Joshua Chessin-Yudin, Leopoldstadt, Mishka Yarovoy, Nael Nacer
Nice job bringing Stoppard’s historical narrative, which ends in the mid-20th century, into contemporary focus. The concept of “othering” is certainly front and center these days.
‘Leopoldstadt’ bites off not one but multiple enormous chunks, some more digestible within a single play than others. At times it seems that Stoppard feels obliged to BE Stoppard, with battles for the leftist high ground etc. Might be interesting to ‘compare and contrast’ with the similarly long historical sweep of Lehman Brothers, which kept me on the edge of my seat. And may I borrow that Fitzgerald quote sometime?
I wonder why the reviewer felt the need to write “…stage companies must also hold up other mirrors of war and eradication — from Ukraine, Sudan, Gaza, and Yemen — in which we will recognize ourselves.” The convulsive savagery of 20th-century anti-Semitism has been a predictor of all forms of violent “eradication.” Anti-Semitism is the quintessential barometer of political immoderation and social division. Every genocide deserves stage time – OF COURSE – but why say this here, tacked onto the end of a review about the Holocaust? The author’s reference to recent censorship in England certainly merits attention, but I’m scratching my head why the phase “Free Palestine” trickled into this piece, except as a form of virtue signaling. The play is not explicitly about censorship, nor does it make claims that the Holocaust is a unique and separate example of genocide beyond compare, although it could make such a claim. The director’s note expresses her hope that the production be a “mirror held up to any community that has wrestled with the forces of erasure,” but the reviewer’s appeal for all the world’s genocidal flashpoints to be given stage time seems to miss the vastness of the play’s subject matter, the mastery of its author to build a narrative infused with the specifics of institutionalized racism and erasure, and the universality and timeliness of its themes. We need unity, not division at this time of great social and political unraveling, not division.
I felt the need to write it because there are so few other mirrors (plays) being held up to those heinous conflicts, at least in the Boston area. Glad to have Stoppard’s drama performed, and I talked about its considerable merits and dramaturgical problems. But to ask that companies also choose scripts that deal with other homicidal flashpoints around the globe is not to denigrate or undercut this production – it is to ask for an expansion of the crucial issues it raises.
My point wasn’t “tacked on.” Critics are not just consumer guides (though too many act that way). They have a role to play in helping to shape the culture. For me, that meant encouraging theaters to turn to other situations of mass destruction. Why say it here? Because this play tackles these important topics. When should a critic bring it up – in a review of The Odd Couple? If suggesting that theaters broaden their purview means encouraging division rather than unity we are in more trouble at this time of “great social and political unraveling” than I thought.