Role: Mitzi
Starring: Hayley Carmichael, Tom Hughes & Jack Laskey
Production Status: Completed
Beginning: 25 February 2010 (UK)
Directed By: Luc Bondy
Writer: Arthur Schnitzler’s
Genre: Drama
Scottish playwright David Harrower has translated Arthur Schnitzler’s fin-de-siècle drama Liebelei into contemporary, idiomatic English. Luc Bondy directs the play with a young cast at London’s Young Vic Theatre. Two young upper-class men “collect” love affairs and try to have fun without problems or strings; it is the eve of a big war, a period when people want to put their minds off things, to live for the day and celebrate the moment, which is not always possible. Fritz, the protagonist of the play, collects moments that radiate the perfume of eternity. His friend Theodor arranges for an affair with a sweet-natured suburban girl to help Fritz forget the vicissitudes of his liaison with a married society lady. Already the first scene is imbued with the fear of death, since the lady’s husband has challenged Fritz to a duel. The party the friends so desperately want to enjoy does not get going. The flirtation with sweet Christine almost becomes a serious love story – a development that was hardly intended and now collides with Fritz’s affair with the upper-class woman. The inherent dynamics of this conflict cause a catastrophe that leads to Fritz’s death in the duel, and Christine, who has truly fallen in love, is left all alone. It is only three days after her lover’s death that she learns how he died in a duel – for another woman.
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