La Ronde

La Ronde, originally named Reigen in German, is an 1897 play by Arthur Schnitzler. It wasn't performed till 1924, and then it was deemed obscene and shut down.

The play takes place in Vienna in the 1890s and consists of 10 love scenes between pairs of people. There are 10 characters, each playing in two adjacent scenes (counting the last as adjacent to the first). The play starts with The Whore and The Soldier, followed by the Soldier and The Parlor Maid, and so on in this fashion until making full circle with The Whore back in the first scene.

Schnitzler's original subtext was the spread of syphilis, though most modern adaptations concentrate on the characterization of people in their unguarded moments.

Scenes:
 * 1) The Whore and the Soldier
 * 2) The Soldier and the Parlor Maid
 * 3) The Parlor Maid and the Young Gentleman
 * 4) The Young Gentleman and the Young Wife
 * 5) The Young Wife and The Husband
 * 6) The Husband and the Little Miss
 * 7) The Little Miss and the Poet
 * 8) The Poet and the Actress
 * 9) The Actress and the Count
 * 10) The Count and the Whore

It's been filmed three times: the 1964 film La Ronde, directed by Roger Vadim; Reigen (the original title of Schnitzler's play), a 1973 film directed by Otto Schenk, and the 1950 film La Ronde by Max Ophüls, the latter containing the famous La Ronde waltz by Oscar Straus.

It's been adapted for the stage by David Hare as The Blue Room (in which two performers played all the roles), by Michael John LaChiusa as a musical, Hello Again (which shifts decades for each scene, though the characters remain the same), and by Eric Bentley as Round 2 (a Gay version set in The Seventies New York).