History has informed the audience that Austria won’t so easily shed its Leopoldstadts, and Hermann’s dreams of assimilation are delusions, that wealth and civic-mindedness and politesse will come to nothing in just a few short decades, when a simple, loud knock at the door will have this beautiful family frozen in terror, the only word capable of expressing what they see outside being a panicked whisper “trouble.” Hermann, unlike his more politically astute and analytical brother-in-law Ludwig (Brandon Uranowitz), has no use for radical talk of a Jewish homeland in some godforsaken desert, and places his trust in such social markers as wealth, connections, participation in the high culture and genteel (and gentile) society that so clearly separates, spiritually and otherwise, the world-class city of Vienna from its old Jewish ghetto district of Leopoldstadt. One of those appointments of set designer Richard Hudson’s detail-perfect surroundings is a lovingly decorated Christmas tree – a nod to the Catholics who have married into this otherwise Jewish family and, perhaps more tellingly, to those Jews – Hermann, especially – who believe that the days of separatism are history, that full assimilation of Jews into the Austria they’ve long called home is at hand. When we first encounter, in 1899, the extended family of Hermann Merz (David Krumholtz), its members are as grand and sophisticated as the gorgeously appointed Old World drawing room in Vienna. Is Tony-Winning 'Leopoldstadt' The Last Of A Dying Breed? "I Don't Know When There'll Be A Play Like This Again" Due To Broadway Economics, Producer Sonia Friedman Says
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