Reigen, by Arthur
Schnitzler It's a delicate task for a director to provide for the bedroom scene
in a play: done realistically, it requires extraordinary mutual trust
by the actors, and all too easily sexual energy morphs into comic
relief. But if one such scene is difficult enough to handle, what
to do with ten of them? This is the challenge that Arthur Schnitzler
poses with Reigen - a series of sex scenes in a variety of
places between a variety of people. The Oxford German Players' production
of this 1897 scandal play presents a compromise between realistic
and farcical elements. Schnitzler's couples are united in a positive way united by sexual
energy - though the roughness of some of the men sometimes approaches
rape. The director Victoria Martin elaborates on the roughness of
the sexual encounters - they are all fast and mostly clumsy. This
disturbing quality pervades the play; all the changes of scenery are
carried out loudly and in broad light, accompanied by snatches of
pop and kitsch. Most of the male figures are caricatures: radically
aggressive, unbearably hypocritical, or simply ludicrous. All the
female characters, however, are simple and honest about their feelings
- most convincingly Gussie Seymour as "Junge Frau", who
gives a splendid performance. It is only at the end that the male
characters, too, strike a serious chord, namely in the encounter between
the "Strichjunge" of the beginning (Matt Chapman) and the
"Graf" (Tony Phelan, great acting!). Does it pay to sit through one and a half hours of a German play? You won't roll on the floor with laughter, but there are moments. Go there and enjoy brushing up your Schnitzler! Michael Sommer, 13 / 02 / 01 |