A play based on La Ronde by Arthur Schnitzler and freely adapted by David Hare. Directed by Loveday Ingram. The cab driver, the au pair, the married woman, the politician, the model, the playwright, the actress, the arisrocrat, the girl. This production comes into the West End from the Chichester Festival Theatre.
Note contains scenes and language of an adult nature.
The Blue Room is Hare's contemporary reworking of Schnitzler's shocker La Ronde , written in 1900. The police raided the premi re of that work for its frank, objective portrayal of a daisy chain of erotic encounters, seen before and after the act, in which one partner from each union moves on to the next. The couple who act out all the couplings with aplomb are the exquisitely gamine Camilla Power and the dark, stockily handsome Michael Higgs. These actors have a naturally warm and engaging presence but they cannot save the play from seeming cold and superior, for all its attempts to suggest a tug of thwarted romantic yearning. It's a pleasure to answer both questions in the affirmative.