Leopoldstadt (Broadway)
Review of Leopoldstadt on Broadway
For several months now, I have been hearing the same things about Leopoldstadt, many of them along the lines saying that it was the greatest theater show to come out on Broadway in 2022.
I really had my doubts, so I waited until the ticket prices cooled down and when I had a New York trip lined up to purchase a heavily discounted ticket. TodayTix has been sporadically offering Leopoldstadt, specifically matinees, for $39 with fees for balcony seats, and they gave me a pretty decent seat.
It was Row C on the Balcony Left, in seat number 24, which meant the deepest left part of the stage was cut off, but besides that you could see everything perfectly. Worth the $50 I paid for sure. But I went into this show curious about how it would live up to my expectations, especially considering it is considered to potentially be the playwright’s last play, and ultimately found myself disappointed.
Let’s begin the review.
The story of one Jewish family in Vienna is told across five different time periods.
Leopoldstadt begins in 1899, and introduces the family that will be central to the events of the play. The younger characters in the beginning scene will have grown up or died by the time we reach, for example, scene three, and that’s the beauty of a play like this.
We literally get to grow with the characters. We quickly learn that the family lives in a neighborhood called Leopoldstadt in Austria, where many other Jews lived. This is where you’re really going to want to know your European history—from this point on, this show would be better off coming into with knowledge about the status of Jews not only in Austria, but Europe as a whole.
Families like these had assimilated, as we learn one of the children had a circumcision and baptism on the same day, and some have even forgotten the fact they are Jewish. Some of the core events that happen in the play also would go over some people’s heads, such as the Night of Broken Glass, or how Austria was annexed by Germany. There’s a specific scene with a lot of weight that can be easily missed, when Percy starts talking about how Austrians were collectively coming together to believe in Nazi ideologies.
This establishing scene sets up the dynamics of the family, and the fact that it is a very large family. The actors come in at different time periods playing different family members than the one they originally played, making this show very confusing to keep track of everyone.
There are thirty-eight cast members, and while they provide a family tree in the playbill, I found myself thoroughly confused by the end who was who. Not that it mattered in the final scene (SPOILER)—everyone but the last three members of the family were unfortunately killed off in the Holocaust.
I could recall the plot all I like, give a summary, but I think it’s more productive to go into what I did not and did like about the production. Let’s start with the positives.
The acting was superb. Brandon Uranowitz was the standout performance in the production for me. I thought that he did a brilliant job with the first character he plays, Ludwig, a math professor who will never become a full-fledged professor solely because he is Jewish. Even in the darkest moments of the play, he manages to crack this jokes and create the perfect comedic timing.
I hope he gets a Tony nod for this performance since I genuinely thought he was the best part of the play. People were full on sobbing by the time we got to the Night of Broken Glass because we all knew what was happening next, and as the little girls whimpered about how scared they were, it was really driven home.
All of it was well-acted, and the set design was also pretty good as well as we shift through periods and times of war. In transition between scenes they play archival footage and show vintage photographs to show what’s happening in this period of time, as well as the year, and a screen that becomes transparent exposes the rest of the stage behind it. The final scene, while I don’t want to delve into spoilers, was a brilliant staging decision with the lights to maximize the emotional impact.
This was a pro and con: I liked some of the philosophical debates, but, again, if you were not aware of the contexts they would go completely over your head.
The Jews in the audience definitely got some of the jokes because they were the only ones laughing, and there’s some intelligent discussion about Jewish intellectuals and life in general. But if you don’t know who they’re talking about or the significance of what they’re talking about, you’re kind of missing out on a lot of really good subtext. I can say I knew up to 80% of what they were talking about, but the play makes a point of trying too hard to make broad, sweeping statements that are true, but presented in a direct manner.
Which leads me to the cons. This play simply was too much packed into one. I think it’s a play where you would need to see it multiple times to untangle the plot—or the cat’s cradle—and figure out who is who and what their relation is.
I was studying the family tree intently before going into it, and while they bring it up on the screen multiple times during the show, I still found myself lost because actors were playing multiple characters. We also learn the fates of other characters in off-handed ways, such as a character remarking about how XYZ died in this manner, or XYZ event that led us here.
If Stoppard were younger, this would have perhaps worked much better as a trilogy, not as a single play. I think this is a really emotional and important play, but as someone I was talking to was saying, this wouldn’t have made it as far as it did if it were not Stoppard writing it.
I think it was important for him to write it, as many of it is his own family history. There are some powerful lines scattered throughout, especially the image of the cat’s cradle and “you are an accident of history.” But, at the end of the day, I am glad I did not pay too much money to see this. I am glad I saw and witnessed it, but I would not have paid hundreds.
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