"Leopoldstadt follows the sprawling, extended Merz family, who are what you might call Jewish intellectuals, living in the tumultuous first half of the twentieth century. When we first meet them, in 1899, they’re free citizens of the Austro-Hungarian empire, a place where Jews have been legally emancipated for over a century. Leopoldstadt itself was once Vienna’s ghetto – now just a distant folk memory of a less enlightened age.
By the final scene, set in 1955, this huge family has been mostly eradicated.
Though fictional, it’s based on autobiography: Stoppard only discovered late in life that his own family was Jewish, and that that was why they’d fled Hitler’s advance into their native Czechoslovakia. His mother had kept him in the dark for decades about his heritage, reasoning that this would protect him if the dark times returned… but history catches up with you, as Stoppard’s stand-in character Leo (played by Arty Froushan) discovers in the final scene." Time Out ★★★★
The play has returned having been curtailed last year and is now in a limited 12 week run at The Wyndhams Theatre until 30 October.
