Andrea’s film review – Leopoldstadt

Leopoldstadt ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Review by Andrea Carnevali

Tom Stoppard’s critically acclaimed new play Leopoldstadt is a passionate drama of love, family and endurance. Relayed to selected cinemas as National Theatre Live.

I was lucky enough to see Tom Stoppard’s Olivier Award-winning Leopoldstadt just before Covid forced all theatres in London to shut down after the first lockdown.

If you missed this then or are unable to find any tickets for any of the next seven-week run at the Princess of Wales Theatre in the West End, then this Thursday is your chance to go and watch it Live at the Cinema.

The working title for this was The Family Album which perfectly encapsulates what the play is about: sketches of a story of a Jewish family (the Merz) across six decades from 1899 to 1955 in a house in Vienna.

Needless to say, given the time span and the fact that we are in Vienna, their journey will go from the high reaches of society, though the horrors of the first and second world wars and the Holocaust.

The play might be set over one hundred years ago, but its power and relevance reverberate today as it gets darker and darker as we move through the ages.

We first we meet the wealthy Merz family as they celebrate Christmas in 1899. It is a warm and unexpectedly funny start and while at times it’s easy to get lost among the many members of the extended family – you might be excused for not remembering who everyone is at each given time, but also some of them are rather sketchy – it’s impossible not to spot early subtle hints of anti-Semitism. There is talk about the way Jews are being treated in universities and work places, seemingly still irrelevant and semi-concealed within an apparent cheerful and festive atmosphere.

Once we hit 1938, the spectre of war changes the tone and it’s where the play really started to we work for me.

It’s a tense, harrowing and poignant watch: a painful reminder of what should really never be forgotten.

The scene in which Austrian soldiers storm into the house on Kristallnacht is as tense as any anything one might be watching in a cinema, though clearly it can only scratch the surface.

Without giving too much away, the epilogue in 1955, with only few lucky survivors serves a haunting and final tribute the many generations we’ve lost in the Holocaust.

Andrea Carnevali is a Bafta winning film maker who lives in Chiswick.

Leopoldstadt is on at Chiswick Cinema on Thursday 27 January and Thursday 10 February.

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See also January Books by Anna Klerfalk

See also: Back to the Future: The Musical

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