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Sir Tom Stoppard has revealed how his staunch criticism of Communist regimes in his plays, born out of his own past as a Jewish refugee from Czechoslovakia, put him at odds with the “living” left-wing tendency of the British theatrical scene.
His passionate defense of writers and journalists threatened by communist and totalitarian regimes, as well as his pride in being British, scarcely endeared him to parts of the British theatrical establishment, Stoppard told the Radio Times.
“There was a very strong, bustling, left-wing left side in English life and in particular English theater. At one point I started to blame my sanctuary [in Britain] being pissed off by everyone I knew. Thank you so much. You know, [without the UK] I would have been in Communist Czechoslovakia by now!
Stoppard, 84, told interviewer Alan Yentob that he finally tackles a long overlooked aspect of his life in his latest and most personal play, Leopoldstadt, which is back in the West End after a pandemic.
The play centers on the discomfort of not quite belonging, which reflects Stoppard’s upbringing – as well as subsequently growing up as a proud Englishman with little knowledge of his heritage.
“I’m making an appearance [in the play] as a young Englishman, Leo, ”Stoppard said. The character, Leonardo, had been, before his childhood, his escape from the Jewish quarter of Vienna before the war, a European Jew called Leopold, who does not know his own history: “In Vienna, they say to him: ‘By the way, c what’s with Leonardo? Your name was Leopold. Too Jewish? You know you had another name and you are the continuation of that person.
Stoppard, who is best known for plays such as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and his screenplays for films such as Shakespeare in Love, was born Tomas Sträussler in 1937.
Her Jewish family fled Czechoslovakia after the Nazi invasion, eventually settling in England after her mother remarried a British Army officer, Ken Stoppard, a man the playwright describes as having “anti-Semitism” innate “. His stepfather thought that “being born English was having drawn the first prize in the lottery of life” and said to young Tom: “Don’t you realize that I made you British? “
“Why he married a Jewess with two children, I have no idea, but he did,” Stoppard said.
This question of identity came to a head five decades after arriving in Britain, when Stoppard asked his cousin how Jewish they were. “What do you mean? You are completely Jewish. What is that question?” she replied, drawing her family tree and revealing that most of her closest relatives had perished in Auschwitz and other camps.
“I think my mom somewhat conditioned me to draw a line behind me when I walked the English coast,” Stoppard recalls. “Essentially the message [to myself] was: ‘This is what happened to your family and you just broke up with a different name, a different nationality. To wake up!'”
The long awakening to start reconciling his overlapping identities was summed up 20 years later, when he texted his producer to tell him he had started working on a new play. What had he written about? “To be Jewish. “
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