Leopoldstadt

By Tom Stoppard

**Winner of the Tony Award for Best Play**

Finally making its Broadway debut in a limited engagement run, Tom Stoppard’s humane and heartbreaking Olivier Award-winning play of love, family, and endurance

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Leopoldstadt was the old, crowded Jewish quarter of Vienna, a city humming with artistic and intellectual excitement. Stoppard’s epic yet intimate drama centers on Hermann Merz, a manufacturer and baptized Jew married to Catholic Gretl, whose extended family convene at their fashionable apartment on Christmas Day in 1899. Yet by the time the play closes, Austria has passed through the convulsions of war, revolution, impoverishment, annexation by Nazi Germany, and the Holocaust, which stole the lives of 65,000 Austrian Jews alone. From one of today’s most acclaimed playwrights, Leopoldstadt is a human and heartbreaking drama of literary brilliance, historical verisimilitude, and powerful emotion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Release date: Aug 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9780802157720

Book preview

Praise for Leopoldstadt

[Stoppard’s] most personal work ever, one which uses a slow excavation of his own Jewish history to create an epic family saga, examining—among many other themes—what it means to be Jewish . . . A summation of sorts.

—Vogue

Quietly devastating . . . Full of wistful, low-sun melancholy, black humor, and rage.

—Hollywood Reporter

An intimate epic . . . The emotional authenticity shines through.

—Variety

Part epic and part essay, follows the trajectory of a couple of prosperous intermarried Viennese Jewish families from 1899 to 1955, but underneath the eventfulness of its surface is another equally poignant struggle—the spectacle of an 82-year-old playwright inhabiting a mishpachah of his own making, trying to reclaim by the power of imagination his disremembered history and his heart.

—Air Mail

"History will record Leopoldstadt as Tom Stoppard’s Schindler’s List . . . Brilliant."

—Spectator

A late masterwork . . . Teeming with humanity and history . . . An early contender for play of the year.

—Evening Standard

Heartfelt . . . A benign, enriching gift.

—Daily Mail

Deft and lucid . . . Breathtaking, the work of a master . . . A powerful and sincere tribute to a vanished people.

—Time Out London

Also by Tom Stoppard

PLAYS

The Hard Problem

Five European Plays: Nestroy, Schnitzler, Molnár, Havel

The Real Inspector Hound

After Magritte

Jumpers

Travesties

Dirty Linen and New-Found-Land

Every Good Boy Deserves Favour

Dogg’s Hamlet and Cahoot’s Macbeth

Arcadia

The Real Thing

Hapgood

Indian Ink

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead

The Invention of Love

Voyage: The Coast of Utopia Part I

Shipwreck: The Coast of Utopia Part II

Salvage: The Coast of Utopia Part III

Rock ’n’ Roll

The Coast of Utopia: A Trilogy

TELEVISION SCRIPTS

A Separate Peace

Teeth

Another Moon Called Earth

Neutral Ground

Professional Foul

Squaring the Circle

Parade’s End

FICTION

Lord Malquist & Mr. Moon

Copyright

Copyright © 2015

Copyright © 2020 by Tom Stoppard

Cover design by Bob King Creative Ltd

Cover photograph © Seamus Ryan

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scan-ning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or [e-mail].

CAUTION: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that Leopoldstadt is subject to a royalty. It is fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and all British Commonwealth countries, and all countries covered by the International Copyright Union, the Pan-American Copyright Convention, and the Universal Copyright Convention. All rights, including professional, amateur, motion picture, recitation, public reading, radio broadcast-ing, television, video or sound taping, all other forms of mechanical or electronic reproduction, such as information storage and retrieval systems and photocopying, and rights of translation into foreign languages, are strictly reserved.

First-class professional, stock, and amateur applications for permission to perform it, and those other rights stated above, must be made in advance to United Agents LLP, 12-26 Lexington Street, London, W1F 0LE and by paying the requisite fee, whether the play is presented for charity or gain and whether or not admission is charged.

First published in 2020 in Great Britain by Faber and Faber Limited, London.

eISBN 978-0-8021-5772-0

Grove Press

an imprint of Grove Atlantic

154 West 14th Street

New York, NY 10011

Distributed by Publishers Group West

groveatlantic.com

Dedication

For Sabrina

Contents

Cover

Praise for Leopoldstadt

Also by Tom Stoppard

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Author’s Note

Production Credits

Characters

Scene One

Scene Two

Scene Three

Scene Four

Scene Five

Scene Six

Scene Seven

Scene Eight

Scene Nine

Author’s Note

Patrick Marber was my first reader at every stage.

His notes had a beneficial effect on Leopoldstadt from first to last.

The staff at the London Library were helpful as ever. Among the books I profited from are Emancipation by Michael Goldfarb, The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal, The House of Wittgenstein by Alexander Waugh, Last Waltz in Vienna by George Clare, and Jews, Anti-Semitism and Culture in Vienna, an indispensable collection of essays by various hands (ed. Ivar Oxaal et al.). Steven Beller’s A Concise History of Austria was my backcloth.

Alistair Summers helped me with the Seder and the bris milah, and Daniel Kehlmann patiently answered many questions about matters Austrian and Viennese.

My thanks go to all of the above, and to Sonia Friedman, begetter and producer, whose commitment has been unconditional.

Simon Trussler (1942–2019) was my copyeditor for my most recent plays. We spent many gentle ruminative hours on the phone preparing texts for the printer. We never met. Simon died after completing the first proof copy of Leopoldstadt.

PRODUCTION CREDITS

Leopoldstadt was produced by Sonia Friedman Productions and was first performed at Wyndham’s Theatre, London, on 25 January 2020.

The cast was as follows:

CHARACTERS

Grandma Emilia

Hermann, her son

Eva, her daughter

Gretl, married to Hermann

Ludwig, married to Eva

Wilma, sister of Ludwig

Ernst, married to Wilma

Hanna, sister of Ludwig and Wilma

Jacob, son of Hermann and Gretl

Pauli, son of Ludwig and Eva

Nellie, daughter of Ludwig and Eva

Sally, daughter of Ernst and Wilma

Rosa, Sally’s twin

Poldi, cook/housekeeper

Hilde, parlour maid

Jana, nursemaid

Fritz, a young officer

Hermine, daughter of Hanna and Kurt