10 Rounds
Arthur Schnitzler seems to be all the rage. Following Eyes Wide Shut and The Blue Room, we have another version of his most famous stage play Reigen (better known as La Ronde).
What Carlo Gebler has done is turn Schnitzler’s vision of fin-de-siecle Vienna on its head. Whereas the original dealt with a society dripping with decadence and tottering on the edge of destruction; Gebler takes an opposing view. His play considers not the precursor to a war but the aftermath, dealing with the uneasy peace that follows an armistice as events unfold one summer in Northern Ireland post-Good Friday agreement.
The title of the play refers to the ten episodes of the play but also refers to the ten rounds of ammunition that have been plucked out of the body of IRA man,”Ten Rounds” Milligan. It’s Milligan’s presence that hovers over the rest of the piece as each character learns of, digests and passes on information about his bomb-making activities.
Gebler wrote the play following the presentation of the police Ombudsman report on the Omagh bombing. In that document, there was strong condemnation about the failure of the Special Branch to act on information about the activities of the bombers. Gebler goes further: in his eyes, everyone is guilty. His characters are too busy seeking the pleasures of the flesh to think about their wider moral duties – with inevitable consequences. For a modern play, there is something decidedly old-fashioned about its morality.
Pivotal to the action is the scene between the husband and wife (excellently played by Tim Woodward and Clare Holman). Gebler here employs Schnitzler’s notion that marriage is a series of friendships interspersed with periods of love, but again he goes further. The couple’s relationships serves as a metaphor for the whole peace process: underlying the negotiations and good intentions lie the evasions, the lies, the misunderstandings and the arguments. And, of course, both sides betray each other.
Not all the scenes are as successful as this one – the ones between the Volunteer (Milligan) and the Au Pair (the exotically named Heidi from Nuremberg), and the Student and the Wife seem particularly implausible – but Gebler should nonetheless be applauded for his ambition and ingenuity.
Nicholas Kent‘s direction is a bit plodding at times, with the loss of some of Schnitzler’s verve, but he is well served by his cast of eight, particularly Brid Brennan (as a republican activist turned spin doctor) and Stephen Boxer (as a buttoned-up civil servant). One minor quibble: this is a long evening, ending at 10.45pm. Given the vagaries of London’s transport system, this is not exactly an audience-friendly gesture.
