Roundabout Reviewed:
Better Late...

Schnitzler's play suggests something of the mechanical, and ultimately irresponsible, nature of copulation in a lust often masquerading as love.

The laconic sub-title "Ten Dialogues" indicates the form of the play—a set of conversations in which only the partners change until the necessary full circle is completed. Roger Savage's presentation of this as a roundabout of animated figurines, each flatly displaying another aspect of the sameness of the loving, was unsuccessful, because the attempted production of the mechanical ended by being merely unreal, and the play failed to touch the audience.

It is perhaps sufficient condemnation of the production to say that the most attractive feature was the musical interludes, played so delightfully by Theodora Hill and Derek Sanders. This music, magnificently shallow and very funny, provided just the echo of the jingle which was the play.

The conversations in their before-and-after division, stress the central character of the play, and provide the only real distinction between the loves—that of a change of prerogative: the desired has control. Otherwise the loves are as set as the roundabout, or the dance. Only in the scene of the Young Wife and the Young Husband is there a possibility of a different love, for the affair does actually free her: however this is undercut by the gentleman's comment: "… an affair with a respectable woman. At last." The illusion is shattered: this is made explicit in the last two scenes with the curious figure of the Count, for he is aware of the illusion ("Pleasure … intoxication …"), which makes all the stronger the hint of irresponsibility, since despite his awareness the compulsion remains. The play, then, in spite of an abundance of immensely funny situations and lines, is eventually terribly depressing, for Schnitzler laughs not in love with this life, which he sees at its most intense in the acting out of desire. There is the poet who bounces and lyricises—zest for life? merely ridiculous; there is the wife who attains something of awareness, based on a sham; there is the defiant insistence to the very end on something more than the superficiality of lust, but it is never presented as anything more than a possibility, and the roundabout concludes with the tired young and the tired old.

The success of any production of this play is greatly dependent on the cast's ability to utilise and emphasise the host of parallel situations and echo lines, and here the Drama Club cast failed.

The final impression, then, was that there were plenty of enjoyable scenes, but that the production as a whole was not outstanding: we have a right to expect performances of semi-professional quality from a University Drama Club, and this was after all more akin to an unusually daring school play. Inevitably there were good moments—lines like "But a woman like you … one doesn't take them before breakfast" and hilarious scenes such as van Dijk's goatish urgency as the Poet —but these are insufficient to call the production anything like a success.

After the tired pointing of the illusion in the last two scenes I was left feeling somewhat relieved that it was finished, and somewhat in sympathy with the two old ladles sitting in front of me, who left some nine scenes before the end—R. H. Nicholson.

We regret that space limitations prevented us from printing this review last issue.—Editors.