Leopoldstadt

Regional Premiere

By Tom Stoppard

Directed by Rebecca Greene Udden

Vienna in 1900 was the most vibrant city in Europe, humming with artistic and intellectual excitement and a genius for enjoying life. A tenth of the population were Jews. A generation earlier they had been granted full civil rights by the Emperor, Franz Josef. Consequently, hundreds of thousands had fled from the East and many found sanctuary in the crowded tenements of the old Jewish quarter, Leopoldstadt.

Stoppard’s epic yet intimate drama centers on Hermann Merz 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. Leopoldstadt is a human and heartbreaking drama that follows multiple generations of this family as they reckon with a past – and a heritage – they cannot escape and a future they cannot control.

“This is a momentous new play. Tom Stoppard has reached back into his own family history to craft a work that is both epic and intimate; that is profoundly personal, but which concerns us all.” – The Financial Times

Winner of the 2023 New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Foreign Play, Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play, Drama League Award for Outstanding Production of a Play, Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Broadway Play.

“A heart-rending epic.” —The New York Times

“Brilliant and gorgeous. A masterpiece.” —Deadline

“Breathtakingly brilliant.” —Chicago Tribune

“Ranks among Mr. Stoppard’s greatest works…an inexpressibly moving, majestic play.” —Wall Street Journal