‘Leopoldstadt’ Review: An Emotionally Taut and Visceral Portrait of a Family

In Tom Stoppard’s award winning play “Leopoldstadt,” playing at the Huntington Theatre through Oct. 13, a family drama of decades takes place within a single room. Split into four acts, each vignette depicts the Jakobovicz family in a different precarious moment from the vantage of their living room, concluding with a post-World War II reflection on a family devastated by war.

Brenda Meaney shines as Gretl, one of the play’s matriarchs. With outstanding acting, her progression from flirtatious young woman to pragmatist to mentally unstable elder unaware of the perils of the war is heartbreaking and utterly convincing. From an evening tryst to Passover dinner, she carries the emotional heart of the play.

A portrait of Gretl, which serves as an innocuous set piece and a reminder of her brief affair with Fritz (Samuel Adams) for much of the play becomes a powerful family heirloom stolen by the Nazis and eventually hung in the Belvedere museum in Vienna. What the average theatergoer might not realize is that a strikingly similar real-world version of this painting actually exists. Painted by Klimt, the “Portrait of Amalie Zuckerkandl” hangs in the Belvedere museum half-finished. Amelie’s demure gaze and billowing dress are frozen in time — Amelie was murdered at the Bełžec concentration camp and Klimt never completed the painting. In an impressive show of attention to detail, the painting used in the show is done in Klimt’s signature style. The painting is a poignant symbol for the survival of the Jewish people through generations, but also of the Holocaust’s destruction of family and cultural ties.

The play’s unapologetic Jewishness is vital and sharp. The characters celebrate Shabbat and Passover, with the large cast crowding the stage and evoking a real, rambunctious family gathering. The inclusion of a bris, complete with a mohel and a memorable joke about a cigar knife, felt authentic, which is all too rare in popular depictions of Jewish life and culture.

The family’s 1899 discussion of the birth of Zionism is refreshingly grounded in history. At a time when the beleaguered term is careening towards meaninglessness, a realistic depiction of how Jews grappled with the political position of Zionism at a particular moment in history is especially meaningful. The family’s nuanced debates about the Zionist movement and its evolution over time demonstrates Stoppard’s deft resistance to paternalism and political grandstanding. Stoppard instead opts to let audiences draw their own conclusions through the variable and contentious discussions of his characters.

The sound effects and lighting — by Jane Shaw and Robert Wierzel respectively — are innovative, perfectly establishing the tone for each segment. The production uses projection to denote time shifts and incorporates visceral, loud sound effects to conjure up the two wars. The set, designed by Ken MacDonald, is elegant and demonstrates the increasing hardships the family faces in subtle details — a bookshelf in disarray, for example.

The most brilliant, powerful thing about “Leopoldstadt” is its emotional depth. Closely related to the personal history of the playwright himself, whose parents anglicized his Czech birth name and raised him as a British boy during WWII, the play captures the joy of family sharing life moments together, which only intensifies the extreme pain of that family’s destruction. Samuel Douglas’ absolutely chilling performance as a Nazi raiding the family home sets a particularly ominous tone. Each verbal lash lands like a physical slap, blanketing the theater with an acute mortal fear.

If there is one detriment to the show, it is the litany of characters, with actors often playing multiple roles within the same family. It is difficult to track, at times, who’s playing who. To the production’s credit, this slight confusion is alleviated by the veritable tome of a program, which includes a family tree for audience convenience.

In the final act of the play, the three surviving members of the family come together in an emotional reunion in the room: The young cousin who was taken to Britain by his stepfather (and who speaks in the most dubious, distracting of accents), the aunt who long ago moved to America, and the young man who came of age in Theresienstadt and Auschwitz. It’s a moment of emotional tension that somehow feels flat. Perhaps the fault lies on the repeated use of actors, which makes it difficult to track who, exactly, had survived the war. Disappointingly, the final vignette is an average ending to an extraordinary play.

The final lines of the play consist of a roll call of each family member murdered in the Holocaust. As the landing pad for such an emotionally rich play, this moment seems to lack depth — there is so much life and joy, so much intellectualism and family connection overshadowed by the ending. The point is presumably to demonstrate how the Nazi’s annihilated all parts of Jewish life under its regime and destroyed its spirit, but the finality of the play’s final word — “Auschwitz” — feels reductive. “Leopoldstadt” is emotionally taut and visceral, providing the absolute best of what theater can offer: A chance to experience deep empathy and to gain insight into human nature. Yet as a Jewish audience member, I wish I had left the theater a bit more hopeful.

“Leopoldstadt” runs at The Huntington through Oct. 13.

—Staff writer Serena Jampel can be reached at serena.jampel@thecrimson.com.