Leopoldstadt - Tom Stoppard

New plays by Tom Stoppard don't come along very often, so of course when one did, it was inevitable that I would book tickets. My friend A and went on what turned out to be press day 

I have very mixed feelings about the play. I really wanted to like it, and given Stoppard's track record, I had high expectations, but I ended up feeling that there was a much better lay somewhere inside, struggling to get out.

The premise is that it follows a single family, living in Vienna, from 1899 to 1955. The family are (mostly) Jewish - Hermann Metz (Adrian Scarborough) , head of the family, has converted and been baptised as a catholic, and married a catholic woman and considers himself to be assimilated into Austrian society. He has ambitions to join the jockey club, is an optimist about the ways in which the Austrian Empire has progressed, allowing Jewish people to leave the ghettos and become accepted in society.


His brother-in-law, Ludwig Jakobovicz, is a mathematician at the University, and is less optimistic,  more resigned to the realities of anti-semitism and a slower rate of change, and primarily focused on his research.

The play moves forward in time, with scenes in 1900, 1924, 1938 (Kristallnacht) and 1955, there is a cast of over 40 people, although the numbers fall over the course of the play, with the final scene having just 3 characters remaining on stage. Almost everything takes place in a single room, which changes from turn-of-the-century richness to the grim, battered state of the room in 1955,. It's an excellent visual reflection of the changing fortunes of the family.

Given that the play follows the fortunes of a Austrian-Jewish family through the first half of the 20th Century it was inevitably going to end tragically, and this is constantly foreshadowed throughout the play, to the extent that is feels very heavy handed.

And that is my key issue with the play - it has an awful lot of  very obvious, repetitive exposition, with characters laboriously explaining things to each other,including things about their own shared personal and family history.

There are parts where the exposition and foreshadowing are done much more subtly, and work far better - for instance, in relation to WW2.

The final scenes were very well done  - the remnants of the family have returned to try to recover their looted art (A Klimt portrait of Hermann's wife, Gretl) and home . The survivors include the character presumably based on Stoppard himself, a young man whose mother was widowed before the war, and remarried an English journalist, who was able to take her and her son to England, in 1938, and to bring her son up as a Englishman, forgetful of his Austrian and Jewish roots, who becomes someone to whom the others can explain what happened.

The play ends listing the names of the characters we last saw in 1938, and their fates.. Auschwitz, Dachau, Suicide....

I think this could have been a very good mini-series, with more time and space to allow us to get to know the multiple characters and perhaps to show more, and cut down on the lectures-to-the-audience , alternatively I think it could be a very good play, if it were perhaps to be edited a little, with a view to trusting the audience a little more. 

'The Real Thing' at Bath Theatre Royal

On Friday evening I went to see Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing, at the Theatre Royal Bath, prior to a tour.

The only other Tom Stoppard play I have seen is Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are Dead, so I wasn't sure what to expect.

It's certainly very different to R and G. It was written (and in this production is set) in the early 1980s, and stars Laurence Fox as Henry, a successful playwright, although we don't meet him until the second scene; the opening scene is (as we later learn) a scene from his most recent play, dealing with a successful architect (played by Henry's friend Max ( Adam Jackson-Smith )) who believes his wife (played by Henry's wife Charlotte (Rebecca Johnson)  has been unfaithful to him.

The play then revolves about Henry's relationships - we learn that he has been having an affair with Max's wife, actor Annie (Flora Spencer-Longhurst).

The play addresses issues of love, fidelity and infidelity, and art and writing in particular. There is an ongoing sub-plot about 'Brodie', a young Scottish soldier imprisoned for desecrating the Cenotaph, allegedly in protest against nuclear weapons. We learn early on that Annie is a member of a committee seeking to claim that he is a political prisoner, having met him on a train. She visits him in prison and encourages him to write a play based on his experiences, resulting in further discussions of good and bad writing, with an excellent cricket bat analogy. (And a little twist at the end of the play)

It was entertaining. Not, in my view, as much fun as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and more than a little brittle and self-indulgent, but definitely entertaining.

Full disclosure. Despite the photo on the front of the programme, Laurence Fox does not, at any point, take his top off. 

The play is on tour until 4th November.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Probably)

I've seen Hamlet 5 or 6 times (most recently a week before this show) but I've never seen Tom Stoppard's 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead', but a friend is a huge fan of the play, so when I saw that it was going to be performed at the Old Vic (50 years on from its premiere there) I suggested that she and I get tickets and I could see what all the fuss is about.

I'm glad I did.

We started by meeting up for lunch and cocktails, at 'The Cut', the restaurant at the Young Vic, which were awesome. good food, good booze, and good company!.

We then headed over to the Old Vic, for the play.

In this production, Daniel Radcliffe plays Rosencrantz, (well, probably) and Joshua McGuire, Guildenstern (most likely), with David Haig as the Player, who steals every scene he is in, with great skill and good humour.

The partnership of McGuire and Radcliffe works really well. McGuire's character is the more showy role, with Radcliffe as the quieter, more troubled half of the duo.

Its a lot of fun as they wander, confused, behind the scenes of 'Hamlet', unsure of who they are, what they are doing "were we sent for?"  and what is happening, riffing off philosophical ideas as they go. It reminded me a little of 'Waiting for Godot'.

Luke Mullins' Hamlet, seen only briefly, came across as supercilious and not even a little mad, and, frankly, not one to be missed upon his demise. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's puzzled distress when they learned of his betrayal of them was particularly poignant.

A very enjoyable production. See it if you can. 

The play is at the Old Vic until 6th May, and is also going to be broadcast via NTLive