Leopoldstadt
September 12 – October 13, 2024
Leopoldstadt is an epic play. The Huntington has created an epic production.
Tom Stoppard’s highly autobiographical play is the sweeping tale of an extended Jewish family from the glorious dawn of the Twentieth Century, through a pair of World Wars and the Holocaust, to the paltry trio who remain by the 1950’s. A story that could easily fill an eight-part television mini-series is contained to a mere two acts on stage, while infused with intellectually satisfying commentary on culture, politics, and mathematics that Netflix will never deliver.
The Huntington’s production rises, in every respect, to the daunting heights of the script. The set is all sinuous curved surfaces, rich in art-nouveau details that proclaim the glory of 1899 Vienna, even as they become downright gloomy by World War II. The opening scene costumes are sumptuous, while again, as each era proceeds, they become trimmer, even shabby.
The thirty-six characters spread over four time periods are portrayed by twenty-two different actors. In truth, I often did not know who was who or how they served the story, but the opening bustle of an opulent family gathering with sixteen mothers and husbands and cousins and children made the last scene’s meeting of the three remaining Merz’ all the more meager. Not to mention the repetitive power of the final lines, iterating how each of the extended family member died: Auschwitz. Auschwitz. Auschwitz.
The play is about the Holocaust. And so much more. Eldest son Hermann converts to Catholicism under the false illusion that assimilation will yield equality. Cousin Ludwig, the university mathematician who acknowledges that his life has no real purpose, lives comfortably in his quest to prove the Riemann Hypothesis, which posits how prime numbers are distributed. Mathematical puzzles permeate the play. I wondered what purpose they serve until cousin Ernst, keen to the reality that the affluence and surface acceptance of Jews in 1900 Vienna is impermanent, advises, “The rational is at the mercy of the irrational. Barbarism will not be eradicated by culture.”
Thus, this family descends into the hell of the Twentieth Century, Riemann’s’ Hypothesis remains unsolved, and the threat of barbarism eradicating culture shadows over us even today.
The Awkward Pose 