Sonia Friedman Productions announces initial casting for the world premiere of Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt to be directed by Patrick Marber, as well as a four-week extension to the run which goes on sale today at 10am. Now booking to 13 June 2020, Leopoldstadt begins previews at Wyndham’s Theatre on 25 January 2020.
The cast includes Sebastian Armesto, Jenna Augen, Rhys Bailey, Joe Coen, Mark Edel-Hunt, Clara Francis, Ilan Galkoff, Caroline Gruber, Sam Hoare, Natalie Law, Noof McEwan, Dorothea Myer-Bennett, Jake Neads, Aaron Neil, Alexander Newland, Yasmin Paige, Adrian Scarborough, Griffin Stevens, Ed Stoppard, Luke Thallon, Eleanor Wyld and Alexis Zegerman.
The children’s cast, comprising three sets of five children, includes Toby Cohen, Zachary Cohen, Olivia Festinger, Tamar Laniado, Maya Larholm, Daniel Lawson, Louis Levy, Libby Lewis, Jack Meredith, Chloe Raphael, Beatrice Rapstone and Montague Rapstone. Further adult and children’s casting will be announced at a later date.
Sonia Friedman said: “We are thrilled to announce initial casting for Leopoldstadt, the remarkable new play from one of the world’s greatest living playwrights. Our company of 41 actors will come together in Patrick Marber’s production, to tell Tom Stoppard’s powerful and humane story spanning several decades during one of the most turbulent periods in world history. Focussing on endurance, survival, assimilation and resilience, it is a privilege to be producing this potent and timely new work.”
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.
