Leopoldstadt

In the family of Hermann Merz, they celebrate both Catholic Christmas and Jewish Passover. A baptized Jew married to a Catholic, a citizen of Austria and a successful businessman, he is the soul of a lively, close-knit, and happy family. We meet him on Christmas Eve of 1899, when everyone is full of energy and plans, and Vienna is the center of the tumultuous intellectual and social life of Europe. Together with cheerful, genuinely loving, thoughtful, and sometimes incredibly naive characters, we will navigate the milestones of recent history – World War I and World War II, the Anschluss, the Holocaust, and the bitter sobering of the early post-war years. Just recently, this family saga, virtuously woven into a dramatic form, was read in the past tense, like a completed portrait of the brief twentieth century. Today, this play by Tom Stoppard, arguably one of the most significant contemporary playwrights, speaks to each of us about our future and the future of the world we are accustomed to.