La Ronde (also known by its original German title, Reigen)[1] is a play in which ten people form an unwitting interpersonal circle with their secret sexual relationships. It was written by Arthur Schnitzler in 1897 and was controversial at that time. It scrutinizes the sexual morality and class ideology of its day through successive encounters between pairs of characters (before or after a sexual encounter). By choosing characters across all levels of society, the play offers social commentary on how sexual contact transgresses class boundaries. Printed privately in 1900, it was not publicly performed until 1920, when it provoked strong reactions. The play's two titles – in GermanReigen and in FrenchLa Ronde – refer to a round dance, as portrayed in the English rhyme Ring a Ring o' Roses.
Publication and reception
La Ronde was first printed in 1900 for private circulation amongst friends.[2][citation needed] In 1903, the first German-language edition was published in Vienna, selling some 40,000 copies, but was banned by the censors a year later. A German editor was found in 1908 to publish the play from Germany. In 1912 it was translated into French, and in 1920 into English and published as Hands Around. In 1917 an English translation written by Marya Mannes was published by Boni & Liveright, inc. A Dutch translation, by Jo van Ammers-Küller, was published in 1923 as Rondedans: tien dialogen.
Schnitzler's play was not publicly performed until 23 December 1920 in Berlin and 1 February 1921 in Vienna. (An unauthorized production was staged earlier in Budapest in 1912.)[3] The play elicited violent critical and popular reactions. Schnitzler suffered moralistic and personal attacks that became virulently antisemitic; he was attacked as a Jewish pornographer and the outcry came to be known as the "Reigen scandal."[4] Despite a 1921 Berlin court verdict that dismissed the charges of immorality, Schnitzler withdrew La Ronde himself from public production in German-speaking countries.[5]
The play remained popular in Russia, Czechoslovakia and especially in France, where it was twice adapted for the cinema, in 1950 and 1964. In 1982, fifty years after Schnitzler's death, his son Heinrich Schnitzler re-released the play for German-language performances.
In 1922, Sigmund Freud wrote to Schnitzler: "You have learned through intuition – though actually as a result of sensitive introspection – everything that I have had to unearth by laborious work on other persons."
Plot
The play is set in the 1890s in Vienna. Its dramatic structure consists of ten interlocking scenes between pairs of lovers. Each of its ten characters appears in two consecutive scenes (with one from the final scene, The Whore, having appeared in the first).
Scenes
The Whore and the Soldier
The Soldier and the Parlor Maid
The Parlor Maid and the Young Gentleman
The Young Gentleman and the Young Wife
The Young Wife and The Husband
The Husband and the Little Miss
The Little Miss and the Poet
The Poet and the Actress
The Actress and the Count
The Count and the Whore
Adaptations
Theatrical adaptations
In 1981 the theatrical rights to Schnitzler's play fell temporarily out of copyright and several stage adaptations were crafted and performed.
Suzanne Bachner created an adaptation examining 21st-century mores, including, straight, gay, and bisexual characters entitled Circle. Circle opened its five-month off-Broadway run at The Kraine Theater on February 15, 2002, Horse Trade Theater Group presenting The John Montgomery Theatre Company production.
A new musical gay version, written by Peter Scott-Presland with music by David Harrod, ran at the Rosemary Branch Theatre in London in March–April 2011.
A new translation, translated by Lukas Raphael, directed by Joel Cottrell and designed by Amber Dernulc set in 1953, opened at The White Bear in London in August 2011.
A new contemporary adaptation, by American playwright Steven Dietz, is called "American la Ronde". This version hews to the Schnitzler structure but updates the roles to more modern archetypes. It also leaves the gender of all roles at the discretion of the producing theatre. "American la Ronde" is published by Dramatists Play Service, New York. This adaptation, under its previous title 360 (round dance), was given a workshop production at the University of Texas at Austin in 2011.[9]
The dramatic structure of the play has been utilized by longform improv ensembles.[10] A series of two-person improvised scenes are interwoven in the same way as Schnitzler's characters are. The form was first used by Craig Cackowski in Chicago in the mid-1990s.[11]
in February 2017, a new adaptation written and directed by Max Gill was first staged at The Bunker Theatre, London.[12] The cast featured Alexander Vlahos, Lauren Samuels, Amanda Wilkin and Leemore Marrett Jr. In Gill's new version, a gender-fluid text meant that any part could be played by any actor, regardless of gender.[13] The roles were assigned each night in between scenes by a 'La Ronde' or Wheel of Fortune. There were over 3000 possible realisations of the play. The text is published by Oberon Books.[14]
Operatic adaptation
Reigen, a 1993 German-language operatic adaptation by Philippe Boesmans, premiered at La Monnaie, Brussels in 1993, and subsequently recorded.
Television adaptation
In his autobiography, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: and Other Things I've Learned, Alan Alda says that for the first story he wrote for M*A*S*H (an episode titled "The Longjohn Flap"), he borrowed the structure from La Ronde. "In my version, the object that's passed from couple to couple is a pair of long johns during a cold spell in the Korean winter."[15]
Cinematic adaptations
These films are based upon La Ronde (1897), some without crediting the play or the playwright:
