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Video: Inside Opening Night of LEOPOLDSTADT on Broadway
May 17, 2024
Leopoldstadt, Tom Stoppard's Olivier Award-winning Best New Play, directed by two-time Tony Award nominee Patrick Marber, just opened on Broadway at the Longacre Theatre and BroadwayWorld was there!
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Hello I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World. Tom Stoppard's Olivier Award
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winning masterpiece, Leopoldstadt, has come to Broadway's Longacre Theatre. Under the direction of Patrick Marber, we're here on opening night to celebrate
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with the company. How exciting is this? It's awesome! Fantastic! All of the above! Amazing
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It's super good! I can't believe this is my best day ever
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I'm so excited! I'm so happy we're open. I'm so glad that we're launched because
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it was a lot of, I mean, you know, the months that you work on it before you go
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in. Then, you know, it's been eight weeks since we all met the first time. I've been waiting for this my entire life
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since I could talk and sing and I've been just wanting to be on Broadway my
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entire life. I'm almost 10. I am so excited to be making my Broadway debut with this amazing cast. It's everything to me. I'm
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so excited. This is very exciting, excited, and I feel very lucky to be a part of this cast. I feel incredibly grateful for an
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absolutely glorious opportunity to play a role that I could only have dreamed I'd get to play. So, it's a beautiful
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night. I'm doing the play in remembrance of my late father and I think he would have been really
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proud. It's the best Broadway debut that I think I could ever have the
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privilege of making. To get to tell this story with these people every night and
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it really does feel like a family. So, when I'm nervous, when I feel
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oh, this is my Broadway debut, what am I doing here? I just can look around and I
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find my brother and I find my sister and my grandson and my
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you know, sister-in-law and all of these people on stage who hold me and who I hold in turn. It's very honorable
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Making my Broadway debut, I think it's been an amazing thing for me
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and my career and I'm very proud to be here. I'm over the moon. It's incredible. It's so much fun
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This is wonderful to think that I'm on Broadway. It's just a great experience with everybody. It's crazy, to be honest
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What is it like living in the world of Tom Stoppard? At first, rather intimidating. And now that I know him as Tom and
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now that we've figured out what this play is, I think, and we've
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invested in it and we've done the research and become real people on stage, it feels really natural
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There's sort of nothing like it in the world. His characters all are so incredibly articulate. It's almost
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Shakespearean, you know. The language is so heightened. All of the characters think, have a sharpness, like a razor-edge
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sharpness. It's a very, we're all very smart. We're so smart. We can think very quickly
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It's amazing. It's dazzling. It's taxing. The thoughts, the way people speak, it's demanding. But what's lovely is it
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challenges you to be your best, to bring your best game, to really
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match the brilliance of the writing. And that's a challenge I'm still
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200 shows in, trying to find my way around in a most beautiful
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and thrilling way. What was tonight like for you when you took your vow? I think I was just doing everything I could not to cry
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And just remember it because, you know, it doesn't matter how many
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times you do a play. Every curtain call is very emotional. I couldn't believe it. My mother was in the audience
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My parents have seen it several times already. I was terribly emotional, and people will tell you, I was terribly emotional going
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into the show all day because, again, never in my wildest dreams
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could I have imagined this. Eden Epstein was standing right next to me and I just thought, I get to be standing next to her while she
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makes her Broadway debut and it's a beautiful thing to support someone. I was just smiling, a huge smile the first time and then I was like, oh I
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should be a little more cool. So then I composed myself and did a little more courteous bow and then we all got together and we kind
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of bowed closer together and I was just thinking about how wonderful of a company I'm in. I could see my parents in the audience
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and they were crying and it made me very emotional. And you could just feel it. It was an amazing night to celebrate Tom's
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writing and all these amazing artists and I just felt very proud
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