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by Arthur Schnitzler, translated by Jason Sherman, directed by Herbert Olschok

Soulpepper Theatre Company, Premiere Dance Theatre, Toronto

July 27-August 25, 2001

“How to Make a Great Play Boring”

Austrian playwright and novelist Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931) suddenly gained a higher profile in the late 1990s when two of his works drew worldwide attention.  His novella “Traumnovelle” (1926) became the basis for Stanley Kubrick’s last film “Eyes Wide Shut” (1999) and on the West End and Broadway his play “Reigen” (1900), adapted by British playwright David Hare as “The Blue Room” (1998), became the must-have ticket of the season.  “Reigen” itself has been filmed three times, the most famous being Max Ophüls’ “La Ronde” (1950), and has even made into an opera by Boesman (1993) and a musical by LaChiusa (1994).  Ophüls’ French title has stuck probably because the English translation “round dance” doesn’t sound sensual enough for a play about seduction. 

In accordance with its aim of “revealing the classics”, the Soulpepper Theatre Company commissioned playwright Jason Sherman to produce a Canadian adaptation.  While Canada’s John Murrell is a playwright who has also mastered the art of producing stage-worthy adaptations of foreign classics, Jason Sherman is not.  David Hare’s “The Blue Room” had a running time of 100 minutes without intermission.  Sherman’s “La Ronde” (in the final preview I saw) runs three hours and 15 minutes including a 15-minute interval.  On stage Sherman’s version proves to be not just overlong but self-indulgent and in the final two scenes fatally tentative.  In trying to make the dialogue sound “natural” with false starts, repetitions long pauses, Sherman seems to be imitating Pinter and Mamet without, however, the concision of either.  Unlike Schnitzler, he often doesn’t know how to end a scene so that they frequently outstay their welcome.  Plays from the Austro-German repertoire are performed so seldom in Ontario I fear that audiences will not likely realize the flaws of this “La Ronde” are Sherman’s not Schnitzler’s.  

“Reigen”’s innovative structure consists of ten duologues of seduction in which one partner continues into the next scene with a new partner.  Thus, A meets B who then meets C until we come to A again and complete the cycle.  The presence of every character in two liaisons makes ironic any expression of absolute feeling, making “La Ronde” one of the great anatomies of human self-deception.  Just as Hare moved the setting from turn-of-the-century Vienna to contemporary London, Sherman moves it to contemporary Toronto.  As in other adaptations he has retained Schnitzler’s sequence but has had to change some characters--the Soldier to an Athlete, the Count to a Politician.  Hare was able to capture the mordant humour the play is known for, but sadly in Sherman’s hands the majority of the ten scenes are merely boring.

This is a great pity since the production itself is superb.  Most North American directors carry on as if Brecht and Artaud never existed, but German director Herbert Olschok like the best European directors has absorbed their techniques and found new ways of adapting them.  Olschok has poised the Soulpepper troupe’s acting style precisely at a point midway between the naturalistic and the satiric.  He gives the characters a signature gesture to accompany their main preoccupation.  This makes the characters distinct, but it also shows each is prey to a mechanical reflex of thought not unlike the impulse to sex that unites them all.  The approach to each union slides from naturalism into the choreography of modern dance.  Coitus itself is signalled by an abrupt change of lights, the freezing of the couple into a Munch-like scream and the stunning saxophone improvisations of Colleen Allen. 

Olschok has Allen begin the play and lead the gradually increasing numbers of characters we’ve met across the stage as they effect each scene change.  He thus neatly underscores the main theme of the play that the longing for oblivion in sexual union is not unlike the longing for death.  Allen becomes a kind of Pied Piper in this round dance that is also a dance of death.  The characters may speak of love but it is increasingly clear that this cross-section of society uses this word only as a ploy to obtain self-gratification, each character falling in love with the image he or she has projected onto the other.  In this way “La Ronde” uncannily anticipates Patrick Marber’s “Closer” by 97 years. 

Designer Astrid Jansen has outdone herself with a set that is a work of art in itself.  The central set element has three hinged wings in dusky shades that the actors push into various configurations to suggest the play’s ten different settings. Downstage right is a smaller curved wall that actors also roll into place to add detail to these settings.  Soon enough one notices soon that both set pieces are being moved in circles, the curved wall making smaller circles in the shadow of the large trifold wall—a wonderful example of the design reinforcing a play’s theme.  German designer Joachim Herzog‘s costumes instantly characterize each player.      

Ideally the cast of five men and five women will each have equal weight since one of Schnitzler’s critiques of mechanical sex is the interchangeability of partners.  Sherman’s adaptation creates inequalities.  Tony Nardi quickly becomes the audience favourite as the obsessive-compulsive Husband with the odd notion that marriage should be a series of affairs between husband and wife separated by periods of friendship.  Fastidious as this may sound it, of course, brings marriage down to the level of all the play’s other couplings and is further ironized by the Husband’s lust for the Girl in the next scene.  This is the way the humour of the play should work and in Nardi’s two scenes it does.  Martha Burns as his Wife is also excellent, ridiculously obsessed with the time in her liaison with the Student and justly bemused by her Husband.  Allan Hawco is very fine as the Student awkwardly seducing the Maid and later acutely embarrassed by his sexual failure with the Wife.  Oliver Becker is comically intense as the self-obsessed Writer in his scene with the Girl, but is badly let down by the poor writing in his scene with the Actress. 

There are difficulties with all the other female roles.  Holly Lewis doesn’t have the experience or vocal command to bring off the crucial role of the Hooker, the character who begins and ends the play.  Stephanie Baptist and especially Patricia Fagan don’t make the subtext of their actions clear enough so we understand how they find themselves in their situations.  Nancy Palk could certainly make a grand Actress, but her scenes are so poorly written that neither her motive nor character is clear.  Kyle Horton as the Athlete doesn’t have enough assurance to bring off this obnoxious character.  And strangely enough, Dean Gilmour, famous for his work with Theatre Smith-Gilmour, seems totally miscast as the Politician.  This character, alone among the ten, is capable of reflection.  Many of his insights, such as the impossibility of living in the moment, draw together the themes of the play.  The mixture of philosophizing and sexual dalliance seems quite believable with Schnitzler’s Count.  With Sherman’s Canadian senator (as might be expected) it is impossible to credit anything he says.  Thus, the last two scenes of the play fail miserably and there is nothing Gilmour can do to remedy Sherman’s misconception of the part.

I cannot recommend that anyone see Soulpepper’s “La Ronde” in its entirety.  The audience buzz at intermission was lively with many people seeking parallels with other plays and films.  At the end of the play the audience was justifiably disappointed.  Those curious to have some experience of a well-directed and well-designed “La Ronde”, would do well to see the first half and leave at intermission thus sparing themselves the depressing experience of witnessing an adaptor’s abilities desert him utterly thereby ruining a great play.

Photo: Colleen Allen a the Saxophonist. ©2001 Astrid Jansen.