Far and Wide

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Vienna at the turn of the 20th century boasted some of the world's most important thinkers and artists. Physicist Erwin Schrödinger, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, composers Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schoenberg, and fathers of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung could be found in many of the same cafés and concert halls.

Among the city's important pre-war writers, along with Franz Kafka, was the doctor-turned-playwright Arthur Schnitzler. Most famous for his roundelay of sexual encounters titled Reigen (also known as La Ronde and Hands Around), Schnitzler wrote contemporaneously with Chekhov, Ibsen, Shaw, and Strindberg. Reigen has had an unmistakable impact on stage w[...]

Jonathan Bank, the Mint Theater Company's artistic director, has been calling the bluff of self-proclaimed serious theatergoers for just over 10 years by rummaging through cobweb-covered filing cabinets for obscure and/or forgotten plays. With the current adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's Far and Wide, which Bank also directed, the venerable outfit is giving one of its severest yet most rewarding tests. All of those eager to keep their theater-struck credentials are hereby pointed towards a first New York production good enough to reveal the virtues of Schnitzler's drama about love, lust, and those who have difficulty distinguishing between the two.

Because Schnitzler (1862-1931) was a wo[...]