![]() Characters emerge fitfully because Stoppard seems less interested in them as individuals than as a family unit and it is a family that we will follow through the five periods that constitute the play. The chatter referred to is not interested in witty wordplay and the kind of verbal high jinks one associates with a Stoppard play. And, of course, being Stoppard, he still manages to surprise us. It is the play many of Stoppard’s admirers had hoped he might one day write in recognition of his own Jewishness, which he himself did not discover until very late in his lifetime. They are less interested in their Jewishness than in their desire to be assimilated into a richer cultural society, and, who would blame them, or even imagine that one day, they may regret the decision to stay aloof from their Jewish roots? The Broadway Company of Leopoldstadtīrandon Uranowitz (Ludwig), Caissie Levy (Eva), Faye Castelow (Gretl), David Krumholtz (Hermann)Īnd this is how Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadtintroduces itself. The idle chatter in which they engage is more evocative of the moment in history than in revelation of character, throwing names like Brahms and Mahler and Freud and Klimt and Herzl around to suggest the intellectual firmament on which these people live. ![]() ![]() These are Jewish families, but the only indication that this much is true is that the Star of David sits high on the Christmas tree, before it is replaced by a conventional star. On Richard Hudson’s luminously dark set, candlelit to perfection by Neil Austin, they are like a painting stirred to life, in a faded world that brings to mind a less gaudy version of the opening scenes of Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander. It is 1899 in Vienna, Christmas Eve to be exact, and two families, elegant and refined, are gathered together in what might be called joyous solemnity to celebrate the holiday. ![]()
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