seduction...

Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde, combining as it does the transgressive frisson of decadent Vienna with the sharp plotting of a midcareer Aaron Spelling, has often been plundered by playwrights eager to make a splash. David Hare used it to accompany Nicole Kidman’s backside in The Blue Room, while Michael John LaChiusa rendered its couplings vaguely hummable in Hello Again. Now Heifner has made Schnitzler’s ten intertwined couples all-male. He’s also turned up the raunch level significantly. To his credit, Heifner takes as jaundiced a view of gay sexuality as Schnitzler does of the het variety. The momentary pleasures that Heifner’s characters take with one another serve mostly as the occasions for narcissistic display, brutal rejection or scheming duplicity.

At times this makes for compelling storytelling: Particularly strong is an encounter between a repressed, presumably Oxbridge history professor (Watkins) and his posh and confident student (Townsend). Heifner seems to have intended to use this scene to open up the play, moving from fairly anonymous exchanges to a richer social network. But uneven performances hamper this British touring production. Townsend and Watkins both display admirable range—Watkins also plays a menacing, purportedly straight sailor, while Townsend is quite funny as a campily goth playwright. Piers Burnell’s strained and cartoonish work as the professor’s businessman boyfriend, though, stops the play cold. In the end, seduction, like its source text, remains too much a virtuoso exercise to hook its audience for good.—John Beer