Tom Stoppard’s last play — the most prodigious of playwrights passed away in November of last year at the age of 88 — was also his most personal. He even inserted a fictionalized version of his younger self in a contemplative final scene, in which he wrestled intellectually and emotionally with the fact that his exceedingly fortunate life could so easily have been otherwise but for a fluke of historical fate. His family escaped Czechoslovakia the very day the Nazis invaded.
“Leopoldstadt” tells the story of an affluent, extended Jewish family in Vienna in the first half of the 20th century. It’s a historically sweeping work with a very large cast playing characters across four generations. It’s a scale of show you’d expect at the Goodman Theatre, or even a Broadway in Chicago house if the award-winning play were commercial enough for a national tour. Instead, “Leopoldstadt” receives its Chicago-area premiere at the intimate Writers Theatre in suburban Glencoe, under the direction of esteemed Stoppard collaborator Carey Perloff, in a lavish, captivating, meet-the-artistic-moment production populated by a who’s who of local actors.
The wonderful, dizzyingly busy opening scene, set in 1899, introduces us to successful business owner Hermann Merz (Ian Barford) and his Catholic wife Gretl (Kate Fry), along with his mother, his sister, his sister’s husband, his sister’s husband’s sisters and kids galore.
I’m sparing you a litany of all the character and actor names, because it’s a long, long list. Don’t try keeping track of how they are related; even the characters themselves aren’t always quite sure.
There are a couple of important things to know, however. First, this is Vienna in its cultural glory. There are three books under heated discussion in the luxuriously appointed room, all authored by Jewish inhabitants of the city: the needs-no-introduction Sigmund Freud, playwright Arthur Schnitzler and Theodor Herzl, father of political Zionism.
A second essential is that the epic drama contemplates Jewish identity throughout. Some of the consideration comes through open debate — should Jews assimilate or recognize that they will never be fully accepted? But much also involves more personal, internal swirling among ambivalence, modest pride and confusion (see also: Stoppard, Tom).
In fact, in this opening scene, the children decorate a Christmas tree, which one of them accidentally tops with a Star of David. “Poor boy,” says grandmother Emilia (a lovingly acerbic Barbara E. Robertson), “He was baptized and circumcised in the same week, what can you expect?”
Adeline Rosenthal and Asha Dale Hopman star in “Leopoldstadt” at Writers Theatre. The opening scene, set in 1899, introduces the audience to successful business owner Hermann Merz (Ian Barford) and his Catholic wife Gretl (Kate Fry), along with his mother, his sister, his sister’s husband, his sister’s husband’s sisters and kids galore.
Photo by Hugo Hentoff.jpg
The play jumps to 1924, as interwar Vienna is ruled by democratic socialists but increasingly a breeding ground for fascism. This sequence has a comical bent, as a newborn baby’s mother goes back and forth about whether the infant’s foreskin should stay or go.
By 1938, the characters huddle in the same room, in worried groups, discussing visa possibilities and wondering when the Nazis will arrive at their home. It’s Kristallnacht, the infamous “Night of Broken Glass.”
There are some deep, rich characterizations here — Barford’s Hermann, Fry’s Gretl and Joey Slotnick’s mathematician Ludwig in particular — but overall, this is Stoppard crafting a work driven by history more than individual personality. That’s one reason why he seems unconcerned with letting us get to know everyone. We shape our own lives, to a point, but we are also at the mercy of circumstance.
Leopoldstadt refers to the Jewish quarter of Vienna. But Stoppard also names the character representing himself Leo, as in Leopold, but also as in Leonard: Who can blame a parent for changing his name, “in case Hitler won?”
We meet thirtysomething Leo (Sam Bell-Gurwitz) in the 1955-set final scene, when the young writer has been found by relatives and makes a first visit to Vienna. It’s not a joyful reunion. Nathan (Justin Albinder) and Rosa (Jessie Fisher) — burdened by survivors’ guilt — become angry that Leo doesn’t know Vienna’s history or his family’s. To him, being Jewish is something he has known and not known, just “an exotic fact.”
The scene asks impossible questions about how we are supposed to think and feel about the past. What responsibility do we have to historical and family memory? Stoppard, digging artist that he is, complicates the complication. The scolding Nathan, it turns out, promotes memories that are not as he recalls them.
There’s something too overtly interpretive, even preachy, about the early part of this scene.
And yet as it continues, as Leo begins to experience the emotion of unearthed childhood memories, to be curious what happened to people whose very existence he has buried, the writing surges with a sadness that is at once so quiet and so powerful, with a touch of the funereal amid the nearly ritualistic recitation of concentration camps where characters died, that I think Stoppard himself must have had the famous tragic word, catharsis, in mind.