Published: 11 February 2020
Last updated: 4 March 2024
SIR TOM STOPPARD, Britain’s most celebrated living playwright, believes he may have written his last play.
Leopoldstadt, which opens in London’s West End on 12 February, telling the story of a Jewish family in Vienna as the 20th century begins, is the work that has moved him most, and, he will reveal this week, may mark his final contribution to theatre.
“I am slowing up. This one took longer to write,” Stoppard, 82, will say on Tuesday when he is interviewed by John Wilson on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row. “And the other thing is, what on earth can you write about after that?
When I finished Leopoldstadt I thought, ‘I can’t go through all that again’. Four years tend to go by between my plays, so I will be 86 or 87 before I write another, and I wondered whether people who are 87 do have plays on. It seemed a bit implausible,” said the writer of the critically acclaimed Travesties, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.
Inspired by his own Jewish heritage, the new play is directed by fellow playwright Patrick Marber.
It centres on the Jewish quarter of Vienna that gives the play its name, as fascism rises across Europe and threatens the newly found security of its inhabitants. The topic proved unexpectedly emotional for Stoppard, he admits.
FULL STORY Tom Stoppard reveals that Leopoldstadt may be his last play (Guardian)
Photo: Adrian Scarborough and Faye Castelow in rehearsal for Leopoldstadt (Mark Brenner)
