The act ends with the extended family participating in a traditional seder, complete with Hebrew prayers, in which even Ernst wears a yarmulke, although that doesn’t stop Grandma Emilia (Hermann and Eva’s mother, portrayed by Betsy Aidem), from interrupting the service to make what the younger generation sees as a dig: “For the benefit of the Papists, we now drink the first cup of wine.” The second of the five acts of the play takes place the following year, and is largely taken up with the complicated story of Hermann’s cuckolding and subsequent humiliation, of which I’ll say only that its purpose seems to be to show up as wishful thinking Hermann’s assumption that Jews were increasingly accepted in Austria, no matter how cultured, no matter whether officially converted. Watch this exchange between Hermann and Ludwig. “This is the Promised Land, and not because it’s some place on a map where my ancestors came from. Ludwig doesn’t see it that way To Hermann, antisemitism is largely (but not entirely) a thing of the past Jews now not only partake of the life and culture of Austria they’re central to it. (Not coincidentally, Theodor Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, was an Austrian Jew.) Meanwhile, the adults chat about Sigmund Freud (who is Ludwig’s doctor) and the painter Gustav Klimt (who’s doing Gretl’s portratit) and the playwright Arthur Schnitzler (who gave a private copy of his latest unpublished play to his friend Hermann.)Įventually two of the characters come into particular focus: Hermann, a successful textile manufacturer, and his brother-in-law Ludwig, a professor of mathematics. (their portrayals by Krumholtz and Uranowitz stand out in a universally competent cast.) It is primarily through their conversation that we learn both of the evolving treatment of Jews in Austria, and the differing attitudes of Jewish Austrians towards such issues as assimilation and the growing movement to find a Jewish homeland. Beneath a chandelier, their children are decorating a Christmas tree Young Jacob, Hermann and Gretyl’s son (Joshua Satine), mistakenly puts a Star of David atop the tree. They are all well-to-do professionals and business people. Jenna Augen (Wilma) and Aaron Neil (Ernst) Middle: Faye Castelow (Gretl) and David Krumholtz (Hermann) Left: Brandon Uranowitz (Ludwig) and Caissie Levy (Eva) Ludwig’s sister Wilma (Jenna Augen) is married to Ernst, also a gentile (Aaron Neil.) Eva’s brother Hermann Merz (David Krumholtz) is married to Gretyl, a gentile (Faye Castelow) and has himself converted to Catholicism. Of the three couples we see with their children during this Christmas celebration, only Ludwig Jakobovicz and his wife Eva (Brandon Uranowitz and Caissie Levy) are both Jewish. But the family to whom we are introduced at the end of 1899 – the Merzes, and their in-laws, the Jakoboviczes– moved to a more elegant neighborhood, near Vienna’s Ringstrasse. The title of the play is the name of the neighborhood in Vienna that was historically the center of the Jewish community of Austria. It’s hard not to see it as the 85-year-old playwright’s attempt at a personal reckoning.īelow: Tedra Millan (Nellie) and Seth Numrich (Percy), 1938 It is a straightforward if sprawling epic about a dark history that also winds up both intimate and ultimately moving. The usual effect of his approach is to make his scripts as rewarding to read on the page as to see acted out on the stage (if not more so.) But “Leopoldstadt” has little of Stoppard’s trademark cleverness in wordplay and none of his playfulness in structure. “Leopoldstadt” – bustling with characters, bristling with debate, packed full of facts - is less a collection of distinct portraits or plot points than a rich tapestry of twentieth century Jewish life, and then the frayed threads of Jewish loss.Īs in his previous work, Stoppard’s nineteenth play on Broadway offers dialogue that doubles as intellectual and political discourse. But that feels like much the point of having a huge cast. The diagram flashes by quickly… too quickly, since it’s not easy to keep track of each individual family member in that first scene and in most of the four that follow, set in 1900, 1924, 19. It diagrams the four generations the play will present in a single grand apartment in Vienna over fifty-six years, starting on Christmas Day, 1899 with a dozen busy members of the prosperous and largely assimilated family. “Leopoldstadt,” a play by Tom Stoppard inspired by the death of his own extended family in the Holocaust, begins with a family tree projected onto the scrim of the stage at Broadway’s Longacre Theater.
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