Tom Stoppard's Olivier-Winning Leopoldstadt Sets Dates for West End Return

Tom Stoppard's Leopoldstadt, which won the 2020 Olivier Award for Best Play, is scheduled to return to the West End's Wyndham’s Theatre from August 7 through October 30. The world premiere production, which began previews on January 25, 2020 and opened on February 12 before shutting down due to COVID-19, is directed by Patrick Marber.

"“I am deeply relieved that after a year of immense loss and struggle for so many, including the unthinkable shutdown of our theater industry, to announce the new dates for the return of Tom’s astonishing play to the West End," producer Sonia Friedman said in a statement.

The play is set at the beginning of the 20th century, when Leopoldstadt was the old, crowded Jewish quarter of Vienna. Hermann Merz, a manufacturer and baptized Jew married to Catholic Gretl, has moved up in the world. Gathered in the Merz apartment in a fashionable part of the city, Hermann’s extended family are at the heart of Stoppard’s epic yet intimate drama. By the time we have taken leave of them, Austria has passed through the convulsions of war, revolution, impoverishment, annexation by Nazi Germany and—for Austrian Jews—the Holocaust in which 65,000 of them were murdered. It is for the survivors to pass on a story which hasn’t ended yet.

In addition to winning Olivier Award for Best Play, Adrian Scarborough garnered the Oliver for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his performance. Watch Stoppard accept the Olivier Award for Leopoldstadt below.