Leopoldstadt

 I've seen more Tom Stoppard plays than most people have. Jumpers, Travesties, New-Found-Land, Dirty Linen. My wife's favorites, seen many years ago, are the one-acters The Real Inspector Hound and After Magritte. Walking down from those tight balcony seats (not that there's much more room in the orchestra), one remark I overheard was "Stoppard's usually more cerebral." 

Indeed, he usually has been: lots of wit, clever lines, paradoxes. He didn't need any of that in this play, and there was not much of it. At 82, he explored what has been described as his new-found past: he was born in Czechoslovakia, left with his mother in 1938, was adopted by his English stepfather, and says he never knew that his mother's family was Jewish. This was the same basic account given by Madeleine Albright, coming from the same country.

While we tend to be skeptical about anyone who says they never knew about those things, I've seen enough of families maintaining secrets of that kind to accept it at face value. Whatever, Stoppard did change his style for this outing. He even took a much-used model--the large Jewish family, often well-off and in Vienna, coming to realize that assimilation never happened and failing to recognize the impending tragedy.

Yes, this theme is not a new one. Yet Stoppard handles it masterfully. The conversations amid the hubbub and tumult taking place in the main room of the family's apartment present a picture that comes across as real--in 1899, 1909, 1924, 1938, and 1955. All is positive, if not wildly optimistic at the turn of the century, yet some of the leading characters are already seeing the fly in the ointment. By 1909, they come face to face with anti-Semitism. It's coming closer in the 20's and needless to say, by 1938, the knock arrives on the door.

Perhaps the most insightful scene, however, is the mid-50's one. Most of the characters have vanished--their destinations are announced, and they were not good ones. But a returning son encounters one who stayed, and starts to grasp what he never knew because no one desired to tell him. His adoptive father had unsuccessfully warned the assemblage in 1938 but clearly did not want to brief his newly-acquired son about the tragic story he anticipated, witnessed, and tried his hardest to get this family to recognize and act accordingly. 

The production is superb, as, with the same director and production staff, it apparently was in London, where the play premiered in 2020. I recognized some familiar New York theatrical names in the cast here, and everyone seemed to be performing at a high level. It's another of those problem plays, as Shaw would have likely called this one, that you may not want to see but which you will value highly after sitting through the 2 1/2-hour uninterrupted drama.