La Ronde

By Arthur Schnitzler
Translated by Stephen Unwin, Peter Zombory-Moldovan

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price

The famous 'daisy-chain' play of sexual coupling, set in Vienna in the 1890s.

The play is a series of ten scenes depicting couples in different sexual liaisons. Each of the ten characters appears in two adjacent scenes, forming an endless chain of sexual links across all the layers of Viennese society.

Arthur Schnitzler's Reigen (its original title, conventionally translated as La Ronde) was written in Vienna in 1896/7 but, because of its scandalous subject-matter, was not performed in full until 1920. It has been adapted often (notably by David Hare as The Blue Room), and filmed several times (including by Max Ophuls, 1950; Roger Vadim, 1964; and Otto Schenk, 1973).