Leopoldstadt by Tom Stoppard is not the Playwright's Best Work (but that's a high bar)

“GRANDMA: I’ve been writing in names that are missing, the ones I know, which is by no means all of them, That’s what happens, you see. First, there’s no need to write who they are, because everyone knows that’s Great-Aunt Sophia or Cousin Rudi, and then only some of us know, and already we’re asking, ‘Who’s that with Gertrude?’ and ‘I don’t remember this man with the little dog,’ and you don’t realize how fast they’re disappearing from being remembered…” (21)

The works of British playwright Tom Stoppard mean a lot to me. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead was the first play I’d ever read and loved, and The Invention of Love convinced me (somewhat counterintuitively) to become a translator. Stoppard’s plays teach the reader or viewer  about everything from thermodynamics to Roman love elegies. He’s the kind of artist who makes magic out of whatever’s on his mind.

In his latest play, Leopoldstadt, he’s thinking about family. Born Tomas Sträussler in 1937, Stoppard fled soon-to-be-occupied Prague with his mother before settling in England. His mother and stepfather concealed his Jewish heritage, which he only discovered later in life. 

Although Leopoldstadt is a tribute to (or perhaps an elegy for) the Sträusslers, it is not set in Prague but in a fancy apartment “at the prosperous end of the Viennese bourgeoisie.” The work takes its name from the city’s former Ghetto, and depicts with the struggle of upper- and middle-class Jews to be accepted by Austrian society. Although all 23 members of the Merz-Fischbein-Jakobovicz family are very assimilated—Hermann Merz has even converted to Catholicism and married a Gentile—they are still not treated with respect. The play begins in 1899, during the administration of mayor “Handsome Karl” Lueger, and ends in 1955. While the Holocaust plays a major part in the story, it is not shown onstage. Instead, the play features intrigue, snark, and oodles of family shenanigans. 

Like many of Stoppard’s plays, Leopoldstadt is not strictly a comedy, and despite its high casualty rate it isn’t a tragedy either. It’s a slice of nostalgia for a city that used to be.

That city plays a part in my family history too. At the turn of the 20th century, my great-great-grandfather Marten Braun moved with his children to Vienna from the eastern provinces of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Did the Brauns live in the Leopoldstadt? Probably; by the 1900s that neighborhood had become very working-class and according to Fiddler a tailor’s salary is not enough to keep a family in comfort. But we don’t know much about this time because after a few years the family left for America.

As Braun became Brown and Vienna became Albany, that city remained in our collective memory. My great-great-grandfather lived in the city of Freud, Schnitzler and Mahler—all Jews who built a place for themself in Austrian culture. Members of Leopoldstadt’s extended family are concert pianists, professors and officers, roles that would have been forbidden to them a generation prior. No one believes in this progress more than Hermann Merz. When conversation turns to the then-novel topic of Palestine, he defends his home: “Do you want to do mathematics in the desert,” he asks his brother-in-law “or in the city where Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven overlapped, and Brahms used to come to our house?” (23).

No era is a golden age, though, and Austria is far from a Promised Land. As support for the new Nazi party grows, nationality becomes more negotiable. Rosa moves to New York, and Leo, like his author, is brought to England and rechristened. At the end of the play, they and Nathan, a Holocaust survivor, gather in the remains of their family’s apartment to mourn. Divided by generations and experiences, they are the only ones left.

“LEO: I was quite pleased to have Jewish blood. To my mind it’s a little bit of a distinction, a…an exoitic fact from my life gone by. I knew I’d had a narrow squeak thanks to Percy…really a charmed life, when you thought about it” (94)

So Leopoldstadt is a powerful new play by a great playwright with an ensemble cast and a personal connection to my own family history. So why don’t I love it more?

Simply put: it’s not his best work.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Tom Stoppard is the coolest playwright alive today, and Leopoldstadt is a solid play. But it’s not Arcadia or Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead or The Invention of Love. Stoppard’s thumbprint is all over the script, and many of his favorite tropes make a comeback. An adulteress, for example, threatens the Merz family dynamic (it’s there in Arcadia too, alongside an almost-duel). Historical celebrities hover just out of sight. But now their presence feels more vestigial than narrative.

I hope I’m not becoming disenchanted with one of my favorite playwrights. I would still want to see this play staged, especially to observe how a giant cast like this one interacts. But if Leopoldstadt is Stoppard’s last work, as he claims it will be, I would probably be a little sad.

At least, for this playwright, the record endures.

P.S. Please don’t fight me, Tom Stoppard. I’ve read your correspondence with Daniel Mendelsohn and I know you can throw down. But I’m not a professor; I’m just 16 and if you’ve read this review you can tell how dumb I am.

Also, if you’re still reading, I’d love to know why Fritz, Otto and the Citizen aren’t played by the same actor. It seems to me that each character represents the changing face of “ordinary” Austrian anti-Semitism, and since each one only appears in one time period it’d be pretty easy to change costumes between scenes. Thank you!