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About La Ronde
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Ronde Main Page
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| Arthur Schnitzler and Sigmund Freud were near neighbours (and
admirers of the other's work) in late nineteenth century Vienna. They were both
wealthy and respectable members of the Jewish middle class and chroniclers of
what lay behind the surface charm of fin de siecle Vienna. Schnitzler's Reigen cycle (now known universally as La Ronde) was written in 1897 and privately printed at the author's expense 'to be read among friends.' He wrote: 'I spent a whole winter on a row of scenes which are totally unprintable, of no great literary value, but if disinterred after a couple of hundred years, may illuminate in a unique way aspects of our culture.' La Ronde is Schnitzler's masterpiece. In ten dialogues its ten characters have one change of partner, until the circle is completed in the room of the prostitute who opens the play. Schnitzler presents a cross-section of Viennese society, with sex forming the links. The sour comedy obtained rests on the 'before' and 'after'. Desire turns post-coitally into indifference, impatience, empowerment, cruelty, self-congratulation or disappointment. It is a play about the inter-play of social status, desire, possession and power and all the cards are by no means held by the male characters. The grim realism of the opening scenes is followed by the self-delusion and hypocrisy of the middle class protagonists. These in turn give way to the posturing of more theatrical figures. The total effect, though funny, is poignant and melancholy. It is a play of profound disillusion. The notoriety of La Ronde haunted Schnitzler until he died in 1931. After years of suppression of publication the more liberal atmosphere after the First World War allowed productions to be staged. The public seemed accepting but the authorities were hostile. A disturbance during the Vienna production of 1921 gave the police an excuse to close the show. The ban was lifted in 1922. In Berlin the play became a focus for extreme right-wing activists. In what we might see as a precursor of the trial of Lady Chatterley's Lover forty years on, the director, producer and cast were prosecuted for causing public nuisance and participating in obscene acts. A six-day trial ensued. Forty witnesses were examined and nineteen experts submitted evidence. Much was made by the prosecution of the lines of dashes in the script whereby Schnitzler denotes sex. The director interpreted these moments by lowering the curtains and playing a valse triste. There was nothing objectionable in the dialogue or the staging but this music was the last straw. The prosecution alleged that its rhythm suggested the rhythm of lovemaking. This was too much for the critic Alfred Kerr who said: 'If this is correct then it is the musicians not the actors who should stand in the dock.' Inevitably the whole thing degenerated into farce. The defendants were acquitted. All this was too much for Schnitzler and he expressly forbade further public performance of the play in his lifetime. For years after this the play enjoyed something of an underground reputation. In 1923 a performance was given at a house in London for an invited audience. Members of the Bloomsbury Group were present. Virginia Woolf wrote afterwards: 'the audience felt simply as if a real copulation were going on in the room and tried to talk to drown the very realistic groans being made by Partridge. [an actress] It was a great relief when Marjorie sang hymns.' Schnitzler's work suffered under the Nazi regime but became better known in Britain after Max Ophuls masterly film of La Ronde (1950). A more contemporary version of the work called The Blue Room was written by David Hare. Schnitzler himself seems to have underestimated the power of his work. What he took to be an exercise in documentary realism proved to have a universal poetic and spiritual truth. The critic J. P. Stern wrote of him: 'He is a chronicler of the moods and intrigues, the social events, the affairs and the betrayals of the middle and upper classes of Viennese society in the first decade of the century'. One might add…the first decade of our century too. Some of it is far too close for comfort! |
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Cotton Grass Theatre Company
2 Overdale, The Hills, Bradwell,
Hope Valley, Derbyshire, S33 9GZ
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