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by Arthur Schnitzler, adapted by Jason Sherman, directed by Alan Dilworth

Soulpepper Theatre Company, Young Centre, Toronto

April 4-May 4, 2013

“Going in Circles”

In 2011 the Tarragon Theatre presented Molière’s The Misanthrope “adapted by Martin Crimp”.  As it turned out, Crimp had basically written an entirely new play inspired by Molière’s but set in the present and reflecting little of the point of the original.  This is exactly the case with Soulpepper’s current production of Arthur Schnitzler’s 1897 play La Ronde (original title Reigen meaning “round dance”).  The programme assigns authorship to Schnitzler but says the play is “adapted by Jason Sherman”.  Sorry, but just as with Crimp’s Misanthrope, Sherman’s La Ronde is an entirely new work set not in Vienna but in 2013 Toronto.  It uses a bare skeleton of Schnitzler’s structure and uses it as a framework to hang out his own preoccupations, not Schnitzler’s.  Therefore, if you choose to see Soulpepper’s production, be aware that you are not seeing the infamous 19th-century Austrian play, but a brand new play by Sherman.

The main problem is that while Schnitzler’s play is a classic of modern drama, Sherman’s play is not very good.  Schnitzler’s play is famous for many reasons.  One is that it is the first play where characters are assumed to have sex on stage.  A curtain was discreetly lowered during the “act” itself, but Schnitzler showed each of his couples immediately before and after the event.  The play is also important as one of the first examples of a play whose structure is determined by its subject matter.  Schnitzler completely breaks with the classical idea of the five-act play and with the model of the well-made four-act play that contemporaries like Ibsen and Chekhov used for their own purposes.  Rather, Schnitzler’s play is structured as a series of ten scenes, each a dialogue between a man and a woman following the pattern A+B, B+C, C+D and so on until the circle is complete with J+A.  In each scene one character has a slightly higher rank than the other so that we gradually move up the social hierarchy as we go through the play until, as the punchline to the series, the final encounter between the lowest-ranking characters, The Whore, and the highest-ranking, The Count. 

The satiric point is to show how sex transgresses all boundaries of rank despite the ideologies of purity and moral rectitude that the upper classes think they uphold.  Like his earlier play Anatol (1893) seen earlier this year, where the subject matter also determines the structure, Schnitzler seeks to expose the lies that people tell themselves and others as they try to accept or reject their primal sexual instincts. 

Sherman previously translated La Ronde for Soulpepper when it produced its disastrous three-and-a-quarter-hour version in 2001 helmed by German director Herbert Olschok.  The cardinal sin of that production was that it was extremely boring.  Sherman’s new adaptation clocks in at 2 hours 35 minutes, but it still has arid patches.  Ideally, one should be able to see the play in about 100 minutes without an act-break.

Sherman violates Schnitzler’s structure by adding a prelude where he introduces all ten characters and an eleventh scene where A and B meet a second time, as if the circularity of Schnitzler’s scheme were not clear enough.  Besides that, one of Sherman’s adapted scenes has no sex between the characters and two of his scenes involve three not two characters.  Catalan playwright Sergi Belbel’s adaptation Caresses (1991) adds an eleventh scene that extends the series with K+A and has only one scene including sex.  At least he retitled Schnitzler’s play and did not claim it was merely an “adaptation”.

Knowing that Schnitzler’s play shocked his contemporaries when it was first produced in 1920, Sherman sets out to shock his, but trying to shock a modern urban audience is a hopeless endeavour.  People can see far more shocking things every day on television or the internet than they will on stage.  Yet, the one plus of Sherman’s adaptation is that it does give Soulpepper the chance to throw off any notion of stodginess that may cling to it.  With explicit sexual language and full frontal male and female nudity the show is rated 18+.  Sherman’s main variation on Schnitzler is to have the couples have sex in a different manner so that we have not just the standard missionary position, but many other positions, along with masturbation, fellatio, cunnilingus, a threesome and S&M.  What is odd and even objectionable about this is that Sherman’s survey of sex on 2013 somehow finds no room for a gay or lesbian scene.  He’s changed so much else, why not that?  Michael John LaChiusa’s 1994 musical adaptation Hello Again managed to include two gay scenes among the ten.  Why does Sherman shy away from them?

In tone, Sherman’s adaptation completely contradicts Schnitzler’s play.  Schnitzler’s play is satirical and focusses on mankind’s infinite capacity for self-delusion.  Sherman’s play, although it does have the occasional amusing episode, is a hand-wringing overview of what has gone wrong with love and sex today.  While Schnitzler was bemused, Sherman is morally outraged.  Luring women from Eastern Europe into prostitution in Canada, the gang rape of women by peacekeepers in areas of conflict, the malevolent omnipresence of pornography on the internet, the unromantic hook-up culture among college students, sex rooms in discos, orgies organized for the wealthy – all these ills come up for discussion and that is exactly the problem.  Rather than allowing the audience to extrapolate his views from the action, Sherman gives his equivalents of The Husband (Mike Ross) and The Young Wife (Maev Beaty) long speeches explaining or deprecating the state of sex without love today. 

Thus, despite his attempts to shock, Sherman’s adaption turns out to be naively conservative.  Pornography is more easily accessible today, but none of his other targets of revulsion are specific to today.  It would behoove Sherman to remember that English Jacobean plays depict dark worlds of immorality while English Restoration plays seem to exult in sexual excess.  Sherman’s new ending, the eleventh scene, is completely contrary to Schnitzler’s satiric intention and, on its own terms, is a retreat into sentimentalism.

Director Alan Dilworth and designer Lorenzo Savoini both buy into Sherman’s notion that the world today is out of joint.  Savoini’s set literally is askew with the house left side about 5º higher than the right.  The frame he puts in front of the set and the slanted walkway in front of the frame only emphasize the sense that the world of the play is off-kilter.  As if that were not enough, Dilworth uses a technique I’ve now seen too many times of having the set literally come apart at the seams as a metaphor for the decline of the society on stage.  By the end the two corners of the set have opened up and the screen outside the back window has risen to reveal the brick back wall of the stage.           

At least Sherman retains versions of the ten characters of Schnitzler’s play.  We have The Whore (Leah Doz), The Soldier (Stuart Hughes), The Parlor Maid (Miranda Edwards), The Young Gentleman (Adrian Morningstar), The Young Wife who is now also a biology professor (Maev Beaty), The Husband (Mike Ross), The Little Miss who is now a fashion designer (Grace Lynn Kung), The Poet who is now a filmmaker (Brandon McGibbon), The Actress who is now a sex therapist (Brenda Robins) and The Court who is now an investment banker (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee) and whose final scene severely strains credulity.  Besides these, McGibbon and Lee also play two peacekeepers who still haunt the mind of The Parlor Maid in two scenes.  I assumed they would become recurrent characters to bring out the parallel of sex and death that runs through the play – but they do not. 

Given the play’s episodic nature, Sherman fatally takes side trips from his main theme to vent his spleen about other issues.  He gives The Actress a long speech about why she gave up her career that involves her noticing the lack of interest among the audience blamed on the prevalence of cell phones.  He reveals that the Count/investment banker is running a Ponzi scheme, has got caught and admits he has lived on purveying lies.  Both are modern clichés and off-topic.  But then Sherman’s critique of modern decadence is also nothing but an assemblage of media clichés.  If Sherman were interested in facts instead of fears, he would know that teens are actually having less sex today than they did in previous generations (see www.livescience.com/28339-teen-sex-fears-overblown.html).

Despite the plays many flaws, Dilworth draws extraordinarily committed performances from the entire cast.  If nothing else, the production serves the useful function of disinhibiting a troupe of classically trained actors even if it does not fully engage the audience.  Sherman’s inclusion of a long Sex for Dummeez step-by-step account on how to perform cunnilingus is just one of many self-indulgent parts of the text that give the play such a long running time.   

At least Sherman’s adaptation of La Ronde is not as boring as was his translation of the play in 2001.  The best adaptations I have seen are Belbel’s and LaChiusa’s mentioned above, even though both productions were marred by inconsistent performances.  Given the fine cast of Soulpepper favourites and newcomers that Dilworth has assembled, I’m sure they could have made either of these two adaptations a success.  As for a gripping account of Schnitzler’s play, and not another adaptation, Toronto playgoers will still have to wait – but don’t hold your breath.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: (top) Maev Beaty and Mike Ross; (middle) Brandon McGibbon, Grace Lynn Kung and Mike Ross. ©2013 Cylla von Tiedemann.

For tickets, visit www.soulpepper.com.