In their latest piece for the Village Voice, writer Michael Musto reviews Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt, where the playwright “once again” threads emotion and heart through complex layers of history and legacy. Named after the Jewish quarter of Vienna, Leopoldstadt is an Olivier Award–winning play by the most Best-Play-Tony-winning playwright in history.
“The already minimal danger that Leopoldstadt might be one of those Masterpiece Theatre-come-to-life experiences that are a little too good for you dissolves as the play becomes more complex and haunting and the production less high-pitched,” writes Musto. “What starts out as a chirpy gathering develops more gravitas in the face of the increasingly unavoidable creeping terror of Nazism. The years sweep by, and though it’s not always easy to figure out which character is related to whom, the play definitely gets more meaningful as things get grimmer.”
