Leopoldstadt closed yesterday at Washington’s Shakespeare Theatre, and we saw the matinee performance. I went into the theater expecting to love Leopoldstadt or, if that was too great an expectation, I expected to find it an impressive work of art.

I am not an expert on playwright Tom Stoppard (or Sir Tom, if you please), but the two of his plays that I remember having seen, I did love. One was Arcadia, that we saw years ago in a wonderful performance at the Folger. The other, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, I have seen maybe more than once, although I can’t tell you when or where.

Leopoldstadt, I should say at the beginning, won the Olivier award for best play in 2020, based on its London opening, and won a Tony for best play in 2023, after it opened on Broadway. So what’s not to like.

It’s the story of a Jewish family (yes, some members had converted to Christianity, presumably for other than spiritual reasons, and others had intermarried) in Vienna, following them from 1899 through World War II when most of them perished, and featuring the reflections of three who survived the years of the Holocaust. Stoddard has said that the play, which he found difficult to write, was partially autobiographical (his four grandparents were all murdered in the Holocaust), but that he placed the story in Vienna, rather than in what was Czechoslovakia where he was born.

He was born in 1937, and the next year went with his family to Singapore. His father was a physician employed by Bata Shoe Company, whose owner transferred its Jewish employees out of Czechslovakia when the Nazis moved in. His father soon died, and his mother moved the family to India when Japan occupied Singapore. He went to school in Darjeeling and his mother remarried a British officer, a man named Stoppard.

Before I tell you what I didn’t like, I should tell you that I was surprised when we picked up our programs as we were led to our seats. You know the insert where any cast substitutions are listed? Well, the programs had such an insert, showing us that five (that five!) of the primary actors (and about 15 individual roles, since many actors had multiple roles) were being played by understudies. Whether I would have enjoyed the play more with the original cast, I don’t know, just as I don’t know when the understudies first played these roles. Was it just for today’s performances, or have these substitutes been in place for weeks? And, I should add that four of the five had previously been in the cast for Leopoldstadt in Boston at the Huntington Theater.

The main problems I had with the show were with (1) the script, (2) the acting, and (3) the directing. I also was not happy with the set, or the loud recorded intermittent music. Let’s take them briefly, but one at a time.

The script. The script part conversation, and part (probably the greater part) didactic lecturing, like you were in a college class. Yes, it was one character talking to another, but that was incidental. You heard that the Austrian empire had opened itself up to its Jewish citizens and that would never change. You heard about Herzl’s plan for a Jewish country of its own, and how some people just weren’t happy even thinking about moving to a desert. You heard about what was going on in Germany, then about the Anschluss, then about Kristallnacht, each in the form of what were basically monologues. As to the conversations beyond the monologues, I thought the words all sounded like they were scripted; little of the conversations seemed natural.

The acting. As I said, most of the prime actors were stand-ins, and I don’t know if this affected the way the play came across. Or maybe it was because of the stiffness of the script. Whichever it was, each of the actors seemed like they were doing just that – reading a script, acting. There seemed to be a disconnect between the actors and their roles. Even the young children (there were about a half dozen of them) seemed stiff in giving their few lines. It just seemed below par.

The directing. I am on less firm ground speaking of this, but the stage is very large, and everything takes place inside rooms in a home. Except in the few scenes with big family crowds, the actors were often too far from each other, and had to take large strides in rooms that should have been a bit more homelike. Also, because this is such a talkative play, with so much of it seeming like a series of lectures, you would think that talented directors would come up with ways to humanize these segments. But perhaps it’s impossible. The result was that Leopoldstadt, except for one scene where the gentile wife of the then Jewish paterfamilias culminates an affair with an Austrian dragoon, is the least physical show I have seen in a long time.
I want to say one more thing about that seduction (if that is the proper word) scene. Apparently the result of this dalliance (and there was a hint that this was not the only time the two were together) a son was born (it was 1924), who was raised as the son of the husband of his gentile birth mother. When the Anschluss with Germany occurred in 1938, the presumed father turned the family business over to his son. When a Nazi representative told the father that he had to sign papers turning the business over to the State, the father had no problem signing. He later told the family doctor that he had no problem doing this because he had previously turned the company over to his presumed son who was the product of this dalliance and therefore was an Aryan, not a Jew. It just seemed a bit hokey to me. Not possible.

Well, that is my brief and disappointed review. The audience seemed appreciative. But we met friends in the lobby after the show. And guess what? They agreed with me. And I met an old acquaintance and his wife on the Metro platform coming home. They did not agree with me. They liked it, but they said they have spoken to several of their friends who felt like I did.

So was it the play or the production? I will never know because, even if given the opportunity, I do not want to sit through it again.

Oh, I didn’t mention the music. I will just say it was overdramatic and unnecessary.