Alexei Borodin staged Leopoldstadt by Tom Stoppard at RAMT

The premiere of the performance Leopoldstadt took place on the stage of the Russian Youth Theater as part of the Cherry Forest Open Arts Festival. Tom Stoppard’s new play, which recently won a Tony award, was the first in Russia to be staged by RAMT’s artistic director Alexei Borodin. Partly biographical for the author, the essay turned out to be a landmark statement for the theater, too, believes Marina Shimadina.

The famous Tom Stoppard, the author of such plays as Arcadia and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, has long been “his” playwright for RAMT. There were already three of his things – “Coast of Utopia”, “Problem” and “Rock and Roll”. In many ways, “Leopoldstadt” echoes “Coast of Utopia”, a huge three-part saga about the Russian revolutionaries Herzen, Bakunin, Ogarev and others, which spans several decades and stages, from the birth of bold ideas to their complete collapse.

Named after the Jewish quarter in Vienna, Stoppard’s new play follows the life of a large family over half a century, from 1899 to 1955. There are also many names and destinies of several generations – and one tragedy for all, which only three of the entire Mertsev family will survive. However, Alexei Borodin emphasizes in the annotation that for him this is not the story of a single family or even a people, but “a tragedy of a minority that always annoys the majority and always loses to it” and a reflection on how to withstand the blows of fate in a changing world without losing yourself.

The protagonist of the play, a successful manufacturer Herman Merz, performed by Yevgeny Redko, converted to Catholicism, is a member of the highest circles, is engaged in patronage and considers himself an Austrian. However, for society, he still remains a stranger, he is tolerated for the sake of money, but if the opportunity arises, they are ready to insult him, take away his house and factory and send him to the ghetto with his family. For a long time he refuses to believe that in the new 20th century a return to the barbaric times of xenophobia is possible, until his life collapses along with the broken windows of Kristallnacht.

In contrast to the nine-hour “Coast of Utopia”, in the new performance half a century fits into just two and a half hours. Episodes of peaceful domestic life flash before us: Christmas and Passover are celebrated at a large table – the family is tolerant of any religion, and children mistakenly decorate the Christmas tree with the Star of David. But the clouds over them are thickening every day. The natural taupe of the costumes (costume designer Maria Danilova) creates the sepia feel of an old photograph for which the family poses in the opening scene. It’s like we’re flipping through a family album, but you can’t remember half of who these people are. There are so many actors in the play that it is very difficult to keep track of who is who’s uncle, sister and niece. Some characters grow up in the course of the play, and the child actors are replaced by adult actors. Others appear only in one episode and do not have time to be remembered. But this is not so important – all together they play even more than a family, they play the very course of life, which dries up in the finale. And as Brodsky said, “in a real tragedy, it is not the hero who dies – the choir dies.”

Despite the heaviness of the monologues, overloaded with facts and historical details, little known to the Russian public, the rotation of the turning circle creates a sense of dynamics and the passage of time. “Leopoldstadt” was the last production of the theater’s chief designer, Stanislav Benediktov, who died six months ago. His work was brought to the premiere by his colleagues Viktor Arkhipov and Lilia Baisheva. Light openwork Viennese furniture on the turning circle seems to lead round dances. Toward the end, when the family is compacted, it moves into one corner, creating a feeling of tightness and anxiety. And in the finale, the stage is almost empty at all, and Nathan, the only survivor in the Nazi camps, runs around it frantically and in a hunted circle. Since the war itself and the Holocaust are not shown in the play, in this episode the actor Alexander Devyatyarov (he also wrote the music for the play) has to play all the unspoken horror of what he experienced alone. And he succeeds brilliantly.

But for Stoppard, the most important was another character – the young Leo (Ivan Yurov), who was taken to England as a child and thus saved. He comes to his homeland in 1955 as a Briton, not remembering his relationship and not feeling pain for his family. In part, this is the author himself – Tomasz Straussler at birth, whom his parents also managed to take out of Czechoslovakia occupied by the Germans. His father later died, and his mother remarried a British officer. Sir Tom Stoppard, an Englishman to the tips of his nails, found out about his Jewish roots rather late. “Leopoldstadt” is a tribute to the memory of his dead relatives, a kind of “Stoppard’s list”. Memory is generally the most important category of this play and performance. As the elder of the family, grandmother Emilia (Larisa Grebenshchikova), said, a person dies a second time when they are no longer remembered. Therefore, in the finale, they list here, call the names of all the heroes and the circumstances of their death: cancer, suicide, shelling, Dachau, Auschwitz, Dachau … and so many times, until everyone, including children, gets up one by one from the table and disappears into doors.

This last scene of incredible beauty hits in the gut. But in addition to purely emotional impact, she collects the performance into a single powerful statement, which today looks like a civil act. And the production of the 80-year-old master, quite traditional in form, looks more relevant and more meaningful than many “innovative” premieres. Borodin looks at the world soberly, showing in his performances of recent years, whether it is the classic “Woe from Wit” or “My Soul Pavel” based on the novel by Alexei Varlamov, the collapse of all progressive and humanistic illusions, but at the same time shows an example of stoicism – as in these circumstances stay human.