The first translation of La Ronde into English was by F.L. Glaser and the anonymous ‘L.D.E’; authorised by Schnitzler, it was published in New York under the title Hands Around: A Cycle of Ten Dialogues in 1920 in an edition of 1,475 copies ‘privately printed for subscribers’ and ‘intended for private circulation only’. It was performed in England in 1923 in a private house belonging to members of the liberal-minded Bloomsbury group. Virginia Woolf wrote that ‘the audience felt simply as if a real copulation were going on in the room and tried to drown the very realistic moans . . .’ An American production planned for March 1923 in New York was shelved when objections were raised. In October 1926, it was staged without incident at the Triangle Theatre Club in New York; but the city’s anti-vice campaigners tirelessly harried booksellers who stocked the work, finally obtaining a conviction in 1929 under the obscenity laws.

The Nazis labelled Schnitzler a Jewish pornographer and ‘degenerate’; on coming to power in Germany in 1933, they banned his entire works and destroyed what copies they could lay their hands on.

Schnitzler’s estate continued to refuse permission to stage La Ronde until 1981, when the fiftieth anniversary of his death took it out of copyright. The following year saw numerous revivals (some with just two performers) in Austria, Britain and elsewhere in Europe. Although the play is not often staged today, it has been accepted as a defining work of fin-de-siècle Vienna, with the controversies that accompanied it seen as an important chapter in the artist’s struggle for free expression.

Three films have been based on the play. Max Ophüls’ celebrated adaptation La Ronde (1950) starred Simone Signoret, Gérard Philippe and Jean-Louis Barrault; hailed as a master-piece, the film takes considerable liberties with Schnitzler’s text and now seems rather far in spirit from the original. In 1964, Roger Vadim set the action in Paris just before the First World War, with mixed results. In 1973, the Viennese theatre and opera director Otto Schenk directed Reigen in a strikingly faithful and handsome original-language film version, with a cast that included Maria Schneider and Helmut Lohner.

More recently, there have been several ‘radical’ theatrical adaptations. Eric Bentley’s homosexual version Round 2 was performed in 1990; David Hare’s play The Blue Room (1998), inspired by Schnitzler but set in ‘a modern city’, was directed by Sam Mendes and presented in London and New York with Nicole Kidman and Iain Glen; and Michael John La Chiusa’s musical Hello Again in 1994, and Jack Heifner’s 2004 play Seduction, both took the play as inspiration.

A Note on the Text