As soon as my eyes dried and I could see clearly to write, I could begin this review. I also had to clear my mind from the phenomenon that is Tom Stoppard’s masterpiece, Leopoldstadt (2020) and its magnificent staging at Main Street Theater. Another jewel in the crown for Main Street, which seems to have an uncanny affinity for the works of the finest playwright in the western world. Oh, hell, any world.
There is no comparison. Stoppard burst onto the London theater scene with his brilliant serpentine homage to Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead (1966), and then continued to dazzle with a score of unique dramas, comedies, original film scripts, and radio plays. His works baffle, seduce, and charm. He writes for adults – he writes up – and his plays swirl with intellect and knotty word play, witty banter not heard since Shaw and Wilde, and a concrete sense of style and construction.
He is a master of irony and deep-dish thinking. You can’t turn your head away during a Stoppard play because you might miss something. Lean in, he implies with a sly wink. His plays, as intricate and delicately wrought as origami, are puzzles to be solved, and by curtain fall all is made clear. Sometimes not, for the sheer weight of words and ideas that tumble from his plays can be heavy going, but the gist is always there. You know what he’s getting at even if you can’t fathom the intricacies of thermal dynamics or the progeny of Russian Bolsheviks.
Often chided by the critics for being cold and calculating, I’d like to ask, what plays were they watching? His work is full of heart and heartbreak, lost love and deception, jealousy and devotion. They are full of fire, not ice. Re-visit Arcadia, The Invention of Love, Travesties, The Real Thing, the triptych epic The Coast of Utopia, the films Brazil and Shakespeare in Love, and now, his last, Leopoldstadt, to truly see the human condition, how it is warped, how it is made straight, how it transcends.
Leopoldstadt is the family pageant of the Merz and Jacobovicz families in Vienna from 1900 through 1955. They are upper-middle class Jews: factory owners, university mathematics professors, prominent physicians, budding musicians. Some are Zionists, some have assimilated – patriarch Hermann (a profoundly moving Dain Geist) has renounced his Jewishness and married Catholic Gretl (Meg Rodgers), but all of them are “Austrians:” European leaders of art and culture, lovers of Mahler and Klimt, learned in philosophy, psychoanalysis, physics. The intertwined families have it all. Until they don’t.
It’s a thick multi-generational saga replete with heated political discourse, warm humor, illicit love affairs, an amber-lit Passover Seder, a child’s symbolic cat’s cradle, a comedic circumcision, teen love, confusing genealogy (even the characters have a difficult time describing how they’re related), all under the increasing drumbeat of impending doom as hideous antisemitism creeps into their lives. In others’ eyes, they are now less than human.
Nazi Civilian (a ferocious Mike Yeager) barks at them during the 1938 pogrom of Kristallnacht. Any hope of being Austrian is crushed. They are now spat upon as a “nest of Yids…spawn.” Terrified, the family is ordered to pack one suitcase each and immediately move out of their spacious apartment as it is being requisitioned by the Reich. With the offstage sounds of smashing glass, police sirens, and people’s screams, the chilling dehumanization is smack upon them…and us.
By play’s end, three survivors, all cousins, meet in the empty Merz home: Rosa (Kara Greenberg, forever watchable) who left Vienna before the Anschluss and moved to New York; prissy Leo, raised as British (Austin Atencio), and Nathan (Russell Tautenhahn, solid and affecting). Leo – Stoppard’s self-portrait – knows nothing of his Jewish heritage and breaks down when confronted by Rosa and Nathan. In one of Stoppard’s most memorable lines: “You live as if without history, as if you throw no shadow behind you.” Nostalgia, grief, and regret coalesce into a brilliant and haunting climax as the entire family from 1899 promenades before us as Rosa recites their fates. It is a wrenching ending to a most remarkable drama. History marches on and will trample the gullible, the innocent, the guilty. But memory brings them back to us, however sad their passing.
This Main Street production is Houston theater at its finest. Director Rebecca Greene Udden has surpassed herself with Stoppard’s surging tale. The pacing, the mise en scene, the shifting perspectives between characters roll like great waves or pinpoint salient details like a child playing a toy piano before hell breaks loose, or Wilma (Shannon Emerick) slowly turning the pages of a photo album in which the past is filled with the dead.
The immense cast is superb and they double roles as history unfolds. I don’t wish to slight anyone, but attention must be paid to: Karen Ross (Grandma Emilia), Laura Kaldis (Eva), Zack Varela (Ludwig), Joel Grothe (Ernst), Nadia Diamond (Hanna), James Cardwell (the dashing dragoon Fritz), Julia Strug (Hermione), Ian Lewis (Percy), and the child actors who have been perfectly coached to be natural, not precious.
The physical production is equally superb. Afsaneh Aayani’s unit living room set with its parquet floor, grand chandeliers, and crown molding undergoes subtle changes as the years fly by. The room is gradually stripped, the grand dining table is replaced by a small one, extra chairs are excised, the piano disappears. A notable loss is Gretl’s portrait by Klimt, a gilt-edged reminder of her fling with that bigoted, privileged dragoon.
Amber Stepanik’s costumes swish and swirl with Edwardian excess; while Shawn W. St. John’s superlative sound design with melodic hints of Mahler and Strauss devolves into whining sirens and smashing windows as the horrors accumulate; all of this bejeweled under Eric L. Marsh’s provocative lighting.
By any account, Leopoldstadt is the show of the season, and an unforgettable night in the theater. With the insidious rise of antisemitism in today’s world, this remembrance of things past is more relevant than ever. Hats off to Main Street and especially Tom Stoppard for this glorious, heartbreaking play. Never forget.
Leopoldstadt is extended through May 3 at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays; and 3 p.m. Sundays (with one Monday performance at 7:30 p.m. Monday March 30.) Main Street Theater, 2540 Rice Boulevard. For more information, call 713-524-6706 or visit mainstreettheater.com. $45-$64.
Editor’s note 4-1-26: Two more performances of Leopoldstadt have been added. Sundays April 19 and 26 at 7:30 p.m.
