Leopoldstadt, Joe Farren and Tom Stoppard

Posted: August 17th, 2021 | No Comments »

I went to see Tom Stoppard’s new play Leopoldstadt at the Wydham’s Theatre the other night. A long time Stoppard fan but his latest production has a special reference. It is the story of a Viennese Jewish family’s descent from turn of the century hope in the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the collapse of the AAH in the wake of World War One to the rising antisemitism of the inter-war period, Anschluss and the holocaust. A family that has been successful and risen to a level of financial and (seemingly) social security in one of the most cultured cities of the world is destroyed by antisemitism and war and ends up in Vienna’s 2nd District, Leopoldtadt, the Jewish ghetto.

Those who know my book City of Devils will know that this is very much the Vienna Joe Farren (born Josef Pollak in 1893 in Vienna) once inhabited before he left for Shanghai. I would urge anyone going to see Leopoldstadt – and it is an intense couple of hours of theatre and arguably one of Stoppard’s most sombre work to date – to buy the programme which includes the story of Stoppard’s own journey to England from Czechoslovakia, an essay on the history of Leopoldstadt by Giles MacDonogh and a fascinating map of pre-war Vienna.

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