Chicago Tribune
- Highly Recommended
"...The storytelling unfolds with a sure hand on Ken MacDonald’s serviceable set (he has worked on this play elsewhere and I did not feel it entirely fit this space) and with Alex Jaeger’s banquet of costumes. Don’t worry about keeping track of everyone. You will."
Chicago Sun Times
- Highly Recommended
"...Tom Stoppard’s last play — the most prodigious of playwrights passed away in November of last year at the age of 88 — was also his most personal. He even inserted a fictionalized version of his younger self in a contemplative final scene, in which he wrestled intellectually and emotionally with the fact that his exceedingly fortunate life could so easily have been otherwise but for a fluke of historical fate. His family escaped Czechoslovakia the very day the Nazis invaded."
Daily Herald
- Highly Recommended
"...Staged with compassion and clarity by longtime collaborator Carey Perloff, “Leopoldstadt” spans more than 50 years and centers on an extended Jewish family — one that includes several Christians — living in Vienna between 1899 and 1955."
Chicago Reader
- Highly Recommended
"...This is a must-see production that requires more than one viewing due to its complexity, depth, and impact. It is at once funny, full of energy, joy, and celebration, while also tackling weighty issues of class, fidelity (to religion, marriage, and self), as well as politics, family, and more."
Stage and Cinema
- Highly Recommended
"...Tracing the lives of a sprawling Jewish family in Austria over nearly sixty years, this wildly ambitious play, nearly three hours long, opens on an absolutely gorgeous set by scenic designer Ken MacDonald. A lavishly appointed dining room fills the Writers Theatre stage. The center is occupied by an enormous dark-wood dining table. Recessed bookshelves hold leather-bound tomes and assorted objets d’art. A small spinet sits off to one side. Enormous windows dominate another wall. The overwhelming impression is one of class, education, and cultured privilege."
Around The Town Chicago
- Highly Recommended
"...On this stage, at present is a very special production of Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt”, his very last play, directed to perfection by Carey Perloff. Based on the notes for this one, Stoppard and Perloff reworked the Broadway script to fit the needs and stage at Writers and Writers has the largest ( local) cast they have ever had on their stage for this one."
Chicago Theatre Review
- Highly Recommended
"...In addition to a large, gifted cast and the brilliant guidance and staging by director Carey Perloff, a few members of the artistic technical team must be acknowledged for their superlative contributions to production. Ken MacDonald’s gorgeous and detailed scenic design is absolutely jaw-dropping. Keith Parham’s exquisite lighting design adds color, depth and mood to each chapter of the story. "
Buzz Center Stage
- Highly Recommended
"...What would you do if you found out your heritage wasn’t what you thought it was? In Tom Stoppard’s case, he wrote a sweeping, epic play about it. Glencoe’s Writers Theatre brings Leopoldstadt to the Chicago area for the first time since its West End and Broadway runs in the early 2020s. Directed by Carey Perloff, a longtime friend and collaborator of Stoppard’s, this final stage play proves to be among his best."
Third Coast Review
- Highly Recommended
"...Tom Stoppard’s last grand masterpiece, Leopoldstadt, gets a dynamic staging at Writers Theatre, featuring an all-Chicago cast of some of our finest actors, directed by Carey Perloff. The play concerns the times and tragedies of a mixed Jewish/Christian family in Vienna between 1899 and 1955, with scenes set in 1899-1900, 1924, 1938 and 1955."
Chicago On Stage
- Highly Recommended
"...Terms like “best” and “most important” are the province of post-third-cocktail barroom talk, but Tom Stoppard is, for my money, one of the few writers who could plausibly challenge Shakespeare’s place in the firmament of the English-language theatre heavens. His work is nearly unequaled in dramatic literature for its inventiveness, depth, and variety. With his passing last November, Leopoldstadt will be his final word. Now making its Chicago debut in a lavish production at Writers Theatre, the play is a fitting swansong for one of the masters of theatrical storytelling."
PicksInSix
- Recommended
"...Like the rest of his dazzling work, Tom Stoppard’s final play “Leopoldstadt” contains worlds within worlds within worlds. Like “Arcadia,” “Leopoldstadt” is silvered through with the arcs of mind-bending poetics of physics and higher mathematics. Like “Rock n Roll,” it illuminates the unfathomable cruelty and slaughter of genocidal fascists. And like every drama Stoppard penned, family, death, philosophy, history, art history and existential crisis skein together to create a dense, intense depiction of humankind that’s both general and acutely specific."
MaraTapp.org
- Highly Recommended
"...When the lights come up on Tom Stoppard's last play, one can't help but be pulled into the warm embrace of an extended family of accomplished Jews and Christians, and the tumble of their joyous life. They are happy, bursting with ideas, memories and good humor, and at peace with themselves. The children are decorating a Christmas tree in this elegant Viennese apartment while the adults gather in small groups to muse on intellectual matters, gossip and fulminate about politics before enjoying chocolate cake with whipped cream."
Chicago Culture Authority
- Highly Recommended
"...The Midwest premiere of Tom Stoppard’s final masterwork, Leopoldstadt, directed at Writers Theatre by his longtime collaborator, Carey Perloff, may be the best production of any play in Chicago this year."
Evanston Roundtable
- Highly Recommended
"...This epic drama spans 56 years and tells the story of a predominantly but not solely Jewish extended family — some 24 actors take the stage — living through World Wars, cultural, religious, and economic upheaval, ethnic cleansing and an eventual attempt at reconciling the past while looking ahead to a hopeful but uncertain future. So many characters, ideas and themes are presented to the audience — we are required to let the play wash over us, then to think about it, and perhaps talk about it, for a long time afterward."
Splash Magazine
- Highly Recommended
"...Written by the legendary late playwright Tom Stoppard, Leopoldstadt is a deeply personal work inspired by his own Jewish heritage, receiving multiple Tony Awards in 2023. Spanning more than 50 years, the play follows one affluent Viennese Jewish family from the final years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire through the devastation of World War II and the Holocaust. What unfolds is a sweeping family saga filled with love, laughter, loss, and ultimately, survival.'
BroadwayWorld
- Recommended
"...Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt follows multiple generations of an Austrian Jewish family from prosperity to despair — spanning over 50 years from 1899 to 1955. Now in its Chicago-area premiere at Writers Theatre, the late Stoppard’s final play includes a cast of 24 actors and many, many characters. Leopoldstadt (named after the Jewish quarter of Vienna) is a sprawling and ambitious work."
NewCity Chicago
- Recommended
"...Part historic drama and part history lecture, Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt,” running through August 9 at Writers Theatre in Glencoe, is a powerful but meandering play. Director Carey Perloff, a friend of Stoppard’s, worked with the author on script revisions made expressly for Writers Theatre. The story of a Jewish family in Vienna and their struggle through four generations has flecks of autobiography from the author’s own life—Stoppard, who passed away in 2025, discovered in his fifties that he had a hidden Jewish ancestry."
