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Stage Review: Stripped of context, Immersion's 'La Ronde' is mere sniggering comedy
Saturday, May 13, 2000 By Christopher Rawson, Post-Gazette Drama Critic
Imagine beef stroganoff where the beef and sour cream have been replaced by ham and cheese -- but it's still called stroganoff. Or imagine "Hamlet' without the prince.
That roughly describes what's happened to Arthur Schnitzler's "La Ronde" (1903) as adapted by Immersion Theatre. The result has some appeal, but it's not "La Ronde."
"La Ronde" is made up of 10 scenes of sexual congress (the actual sex veiled in each case by a blackout) in which one half of each couple moves on to the following scene for another fling.
So after bedding the hooker in Scene 1, the soldier pairs up with a maid in Scene 2, who goes on to meet a young gentleman in Scene 3, etc. As specified by Schnitzler, each of the 10 links is a notch up the social ladder. From the young gentleman it moves on to young wife, husband, little miss, poet, actress and count, before a drunken liaison between count and hooker completes the chain.
Immersion Theatre's list is quite different: Its wife is not remotely young, the count has become a senator, the poet has turned from male to female, and the little miss has become a (male) student. These two gender changes allow two of the 10 liaisons to be homosexual (one of each kind) -- I guess that would have been too shocking in 1900 even for Schnitzler. It may seem less material that the count has become a senator because we don't have counts anymore, or we don't count them for much if we do.
This Americanization substitutes the sense of political shame (or titillation of politico-sexual risk) for what was a question of class.
But there's the rub. Can an American play deal with social class at all? Transpose an earlier European play into contemporary America and it can lose its meaning, certainly including most of what made Schnitzler (1862-1931) shocking and therefore revelatory.
Schnitzler's subversive project was to reveal how the manipulative negotiations involved in pursuing sex undercut class identities that were thought to be immutable. In the "La Ronde" he wrote, status becomes hypocrisy in the face of sexual desire. But because we don't believe in that kind of class, unless the play is left in its own period, its heart is inaccessible. Without social constraints to negotiate, all that's left are quirks. Sex becomes some sort of lark.
In other words, what's the point of a "La Ronde" stripped of the context that gives it meaning?
Sniggering comedy, mainly. All Immersion retains of Schnitzler is the trick of sequential seductions. To replace what's lost, it adds a ringmaster-emcee, Joe (the hard-working Joe Schneider), and a "ring girl" (the fetching Sabrina Camp). The one comments on the action, directing us to rate the sexual appeal of each scene. (Needless to say, sexual appeal wasn't what interested Schnitzler -- rather the reverse.) And the ring girl parades through with the number for each round.
This boxing metaphor comes close to Schnitzler's insight into the nature of sex, but it isn't carried through. Instead, there's a running unfunny joke about Joe's affair with one of the actors (Amy Lynne Stolze).
In general, too often there doesn't seem to be anything at stake for the actors -- the driving need has been lost in the process of modernization. And director Joseph Roots hasn't helped his actors find something to replace it.
Those who do the most self-assured, least text-dependent comedy come across best. David Philip Tener's young man has a nicely comic blowhard quality, Arlene Merryman's wife has moments of conviction, and Erick Irvis' husband shows pomposity giving way to enthusiasm. I liked Jaime Slavinsky's bouncing, leathered "poet" a lot. The wittiest pairing is hers with Marcia Sekulich's actress.
Audience favorites will differ, of course. Ditto the responses to the flashes of nudity. As is often the case with such things, it isn't necessarily the ones you'd like to see nude whom you do.
And that's a Schnitzlerian observation, at least.
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Where: Immersion Theatre at Gemini Theatre at The Factory, Point Breeze.