World premiere of LEOPOLDSTADT by Tom Stoppard

Vienna in 1900 was the most vibrant city in Europe, humming with artistic and intellectual excitement and a genius for enjoying life. A tenth of the population were Jews. A generation earlier they had been granted full civil rights by the Emperor, Franz Josef. Consequently, hundreds of thousands fled from the Pale and the pogroms in the East and many found sanctuary in the crowded tenements of the old Jewish quarter, Leopoldstadt.

Tom Stoppard’s new play, directed by Patrick Marber, is an intimate drama with an epic sweep; the story of a family who made good. “My grandfather wore a caftan,” says Hermann, a factory owner, “my father went to the opera in a top hat, and I have the singers to dinner.” It was not to last. Over the next fifty years this family, like millions of others, was to re-discover what it meant to be Jewish in the first half of the 20th century. Leopoldstadt is a passionate drama of love, endurance and loss. It is Stoppard’s most humane and heart-breaking play.

Leopoldstadt, the sixth collaboration between SFP and Tom Stoppard,reunites Stoppard, Marber and Friedman who last collaborated on Travesties in 2017.

Internationally award-winning writer Tom Stoppard’s plays include Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, The Real Inspector Hound, After Magritte, Jumpers, New Found Land, Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth, Travesties, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (a play for actors and orchestra written with André Previn), Night and Day, The Real Thing, Hapgood, Arcadia, Indian Ink, The Invention of Love, The Coast of Utopia, Rock ‘n’ Roll and, most recently, The Hard Problem. His radio plays include Albert’s Bridge, Artist Descending a Staircase, The Dog It Was That Died, If You’re Glad I’ll Be Frank, and most recently, his dramatic imagining of Pink Floyd’s Darkside of the Moon, Darkside. As well as for the stage and radio, Stoppard is an award-winning writer for film and television.

Patrick Marber’s directing credits of his own work include Dealer’s Choice at the National Theatre and Vaudeville Theatre, After Miss Julie forBBC TV, Closer at the National Theatre, Lyric and Music Box, New York, Howard Katz and Three Days in the Country also at the National Theatre and Don Juan in Soho at Wyndham’s Theatre. His other directing credits includeThe Room as part of the Pinter at the Pinter Season, Venus In Fur at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, Travesties at the Menier Chocolate Factory, Apollo Theatre and The American Airlines Theater, New York, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Director, The Caretaker at the Comedy Theatre, Blue Remembered Hills at the National Theatre, ‘1953’ at the Almeida and The Old Neighborhood at the Royal Court Theatre. Marber’s plays, which have received multiple awards both in the West End and on Broadway, include Dealer’s Choice, After Miss Julie, Closer, Howard Katz, Three Days in the Country, The Red Lion and a version of Hedda Gabler. He is also an award-winning screenwriter and his film credits include Closerand Notes on a Scandal.

Sonia Friedman Productions is an international production company responsible for some of the most successful theatre productions of recent years. Since 1990, Sonia Friedman OBE and SFP have developed, initiated and produced 160+ new productions and won a combined 55 Oliviers, 30 Tonys and 2 BAFTAs. Recent West End and Broadway productions include the UK premiere of The Book of Mormon, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Mean Girls, Fiddler on the Roof, Rosmersholm, All About Eve, Dreamgirls, The Jungle, The Ferryman, Farinelli and the King, Travesties, 1984 and The Book of Mormon UK & International tour. Upcoming productions include Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in San Francisco, Hamburg and Toronto and The Inheritance in New York.

Leopoldstadt Tickets