In addition to his play cycle REIGEN (also known as LA RONDE) Arthur Schnitzler wrote another series about sexual escapades in the Vienna of the 1890's. Rather than a set of random couplings, this second group of playlets dealt with the affairs of a young bachelor named Anatol. Rich in humor but often laced with irony and mellowed by a sort of self-deprecatory rue, these encounters skip from Anatol’s boudoir to Sacher’s Restaurant to a café in the Vienna woods where, in the fall of 1912, an aging Anatol has his final conquest. Propositioned by a very young and very beautiful girl, he tells her: “You will be loved by many men and you will forget them and they will be forgot, but just this once I want to play a trick on Time. Just this once I want to be the one that you remember.” And with that he refuses her invitation and sends her off with her young lover. Then, as all of the participants magically appear and rush to the balustrade to watch the fireworks in the park down below, their faces, which are filled with delight, slowly turn to horror as the sound of fireworks slowly morphs into machine guns and mortar shells. And the lights slowly dim to black.
PRODUCTIONS:
Licensing information regarding THE GAME OF LOVE can be found at Music Theatre International.