Cast And Creatives Announced for LEOPOLDSTADT At The Huntington

The Huntington has announced the cast and creative team of Leopoldstadt, the poignant and highly acclaimed new play written by Tom Stoppard and directed by Carey Perloff (The Lehman Trilogy and Rock ‘n’ Roll at The Huntington). Produced in association with DC’s Shakespeare Theatre Company, Leopoldstadt kicks off the 24-25 Huntington season, running from Thursday, September 12 – Sunday, October 13, 2024 at the Huntington Theatre (264 Huntington Avenue).

The latest and most personal masterpiece from Tom Stoppard, Leopoldstadt is a stirring and epic story of love, family, and enduring bravery. In Vienna, the heart of European culture at the rise of the 20th century, where deep-seated anti-Semitism coexists with a thriving intellectual scene, two brothers have conflicting visions of the future – both for their family and the Jewish people – a tension that will echo through the generations that follow.

“My mother was a Viennese refugee who fled the Nazis in March 1938, so Stoppard’s gorgeous and heartbreaking play has enormous resonance for me personally,” says director Carey Perloff. “I’m honored that The Huntington is giving me the chance to stage the first American production, after my very happy time in Boston last year with The Lehman Trilogy. Leopoldstadt is a play about a complicated Jewish family, and about the choices we make and fail to make in our attempts to survive and to preserve our culture. It is also Stoppard’s most deeply personal play, in which he reckons with the impact of his own Jewish heritage on his life and work, and he will be a crucial part of our collaboration at The Huntington. We are both looking forward to this experience enormously.”

Leopoldstadt is the winner of four 2023 Tony Awards, including Best Play, and two 2020 Laurence Olivier Awards, including Best New Play. Its world premiere featured a cast of nearly forty actors, including children, in London’s West End in 2020, pausing during the Covid-19 pandemic, and reopening there in late summer 2021. A year later, the play made its Broadway debut in 2022 and the run was extended due to audience demand through July 2023.

“When I first saw Leopoldstadt, I was blown away by the emotional intimacy and vulnerability that Tom Stoppard brought to this masterwork,” says Huntington Artistic Director Loretta Greco. “A little over a year ago, my dear friend Carey Perloff and I started plotting how a new AMERICAN production of Leopoldstadt might come into being and she, in concert with Tom, have been working on this ever since.”

The Huntington’s production marks the very first original American production of the piece. Director Carey Perloff’s three-decade working relationship with Tom Stoppard (along with Harold Pinter) culminated in her recent 2022 book, Pinter and Stoppard, a Director’s View, and will inform and fuel a fresh and personal approach to this striking new Stoppard text.

“I have some history with The Huntington and with the director Carey Perloff, and I have good cause to be grateful to both – all the more so because this production of Leopoldstadt will be the first American one, following the Broadway run of the London production,” says playwright Tom Stoppard.

Leopoldstadt has quickly become recognized as Tom Stoppard’s most personal play. In interviews, he has been very direct in drawing the parallels between the play and his lived experience of not connecting with his own Jewish heritage until later in life. He told The New York Times, “In the final scenes a young Englishman, Leonard Chamberlain, recalling buried memories, comes to accept that he was at one time Leopold Rosenbaum, a boy terrorized by Nazis. This mirrors the true tale of the Czech boy Tomáš Sträussler, whose widowed mother married a British man and had his name changed to Tom Stoppard.”

Tom Stoppard is one of The Huntington’s most-produced playwrights, second only to Shakespeare and August Wilson. Audiences might remember titles including: the very first Huntington production in 1982 – Night and Day, as well as On the Razzle (1984), Jumpers (1987), Travesties (1991), Undiscovered Country (1993), Arcadia (1996), The Real Thing (2005), Rock ‘n’ Roll (2008, also directed by Carey Perloff), and Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead (2019).

The cast of Leopoldstadt includes 15 adult actors, 8 child actors (sharing four roles), and several understudies:

 Samuel Adams as Fritz, an anti-Semitic cavalry officer with a few romantic interests in the Jacobovicz and Merz families, Aaron Rosenbaum, Nellie’s first husband and father of Leo, and Percy Chamberlain, a compassionate British journalist engaged to Nellie and worried about the family’s deepening danger. Credits include: Hamlet at Kraine Theater, The Inn at Lydda at Red Bull, and Summer & Smoke at Theater Row.

Firdous Bamji as Ludwig Jakobovicz, a mathematician married to Eva, Nellie’s father, and Wilma and Hanna’s brother; unlike Hermann, he is wary of assimilation. Credits include: The Lehman Trilogy and Mary Stuart at The Huntington, and Indian Ink at Roundabout.

Sarah Corey as Wilma Jakobovicz Kloster, Ludwig’s sister, married to Ernst, and eager to regain her family’s approval after marrying a gentile. Credits include: The Band’s Visit at The Huntington and A Letter to Harvey Milk and Love and Real Estate Off Broadway.

Anna Theoni Digiovanni as Hanna Jakobovicz Zenner, a talented pianist and Wilma and Ludwig’s sister who eventually marries Kurt and is mother to Hermine, and Hermine, Hanna and Kurt’s daughter, Otto’s wife, and a flirtatious romantic. Credits include: Through the Sunken Lands at the Kenney Center, The Till Trilogy at Mosaic Theatre Company of DC, and Cry it Out at Studio Theatre.

Samuel Douglas as Otto Floge, a proto-Nazi banker who marries and then divorces Hermine, and Civilian, a powerful, intimidating, and authoritative figure. Sam is also understudying Ernst Kloster and Kurt Zenner. Credits include: The Comedy of Errors  at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Gently Down the Stream at Milwaukee Chamber Theatre, and Romeo and Juliet at Montana Shakespeare in the Parks.

Maboud Ebrahimzadeh as Ernst Kloster, a big-hearted Protestant doctor who dislikes danger and violence and is married to Wilma, and Kurt Zenner, a philosopher and Marxist academic, also Hermine’s father and Hanna’s husband. Credits include: Here There Are Blueberries at Shakespeare Theatre Company and Tectonic Theatre Project, and Murder on the Orient Express and Disgraced at McCarter Theatre Center.

Rachel Felstein as Eva Merz Jakobovicz, Hermann’s sister and a self-proclaimed “bad Jew,” married to mathematician Ludwig, and Nellie Jakobovicz Rosenbaum, Eva and Ludwig’s daughter, Leo’s mother, and a witty socialist. Credits include: This American Life – As Seen on Radio at BAM, A Tender Offer at Ensemble Studio Theater, and The George Sand Play Festival at New York City Center.

Rebecca Gibel as Hilde, a parlor maid, and Rosa Kloster, Wilma and Ernst’s Americanized daughter and Freudian analyst who is unafraid to speak her mind. Credits include: Merrily We Roll Along at The Huntington, and The Prince of Providence and Little Shop of Horrors at Trinity Repertory Company.

Phyllis Kay as Grandma Emilia Merz, the feisty and wry matriarch of the Merz family, Hermann and Eva’s mother, in whose apartment most of the action takes place, and Older Eva Merz Jakobovicz, hopeful for the future and a proud mother. Credits include: Prayer for the French Republic and We All Fall Down at The Huntington and Tiny Beautiful Things at Trinity Rep.

Adrianne Krstansky as Poldi, the family’s loyal cook and housekeeper, and Older Hanna, a pianist, poised and protective of her family. Credits include: The Art of Burning and A Doll’s House at The Huntington, and Luck, Pluck, and Virtue at Atlantic Theater Company. 

Brenda Meaney as Gretl Merz, a gentile married to Hermann, carrying a few secrets, and the subject of a Klimt painting. Credits include: Uncle Vanya on Broadway, Indian Ink at the Roundabout, and Incognito at MTC.

Nael Nacer as Hermann Merz, who runs the family’s textile business and converted to Catholicism after marrying gentile Gretl; believes in assimilation. Credits include: Prayer for the French Republic and Romeo and Juliet at The Huntington, and Prayer for the French Republic on Broadway.

Anna Slate as Jana, the family’s nursemaid who cares for the children during the holidays, and Sally Kloster Fischbein, Zac’s wife and Nathan’s devoted mother. Credits include: La Cage aux Folles and By the Queen at Trinity Repertory Company, and Indecent at Wilbury Theatre Group.

Mishka Yarovoy as Jacob Merz, Hermann and Gretl’s opinionated son and wounded World War I veteran, and Leo Rosenbaum Chamberlain, Nellie’s son, who must confront and explore his family’s history after growing up adopted in England, unaware of his heritage. Credits include: Sanctuary City at TheatreWorks Hartford, As You Like It at Actors’ Shakespeare Project, and Chicken and Biscuits at Front Porch Arts Collective.

Joshua Chessin-Yudin as Zac Fischbein, Sally’s husband and Nathan’s father, and Nathan Fischbein, a mathematician and Wilma and Ernst’s traumatized grandchild who survives Auschwitz. Credits include: Prayer for the French Republic at The Huntington, The Sound Inside and Leopoldstadt on Broadway.

Child Actors include: Elijah Ditkoff, Mae Grimley, Holden King-Farbstein, Golda Munzer, Quinn Murphy, Hannah Nocon, Simonne Stern, and Elias Wettengel.

Understudies include: Tony Estrella, Jennie Israel, David Keohane, Sarah Oakes Muirhead, Lily Narbonne, Jacob Schmitt, and Jackie Scholl.

The creative team for Leopoldstadt includes scenic design by Ken MacDonald (A Thousand Splendid Suns at ACT), costume design by Alex Jaeger (Prayer for the French Republic at The Huntington), lighting design by Robert Wierzel (The Lehman Trilogy at The Huntington), original music and sound design by Jane Shaw (The Art of Burning at The Huntington), projection design by Yuki Izumihara (desert in at Boston Lyric Opera), and wig and makeup design by Tom Watson (Spamalot on Broadway). The dramaturgs are Charles Haugland and Drew Lichtenberg. The associate director is Dori A. Robinson, with movement by Daniel Pelzig, the fight direction and intimacy coordinator is Jesse Hinson, and the dialect coach is Lee Nishri-Howitt. The production stage manager is Emily F. McMullen and the stage managers are Deirdre Benson, Ashley Pitchford, and Kendyl Trott.

After it’s run in Boston at The Huntington, Leopoldstadt will run at Shakespeare Theater Company in Washington DC from Saturday, November 30 through Sunday, December 29, 2024.

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