Arthur Schnitzler
The Lonely Way
Vienna, around 1900. University professor Wegrath has two children in his early twenties, Felix and Johanna, a dying wife Gabrielle and a house with a garden and a veranda. Felix has just arrived on a two-day leave from the army. He is doing his military service in Salzburg where he met his father's former schoolmate, the painter Julian Fichtner. Johanna, who enjoys going for solitary walks, admires art and adventurers, and sometimes can predict when someone is going to die, is in love with the poet Stephan Von Sala. Von Sala, also a former classmate of Wegrath’s, lost his wife and daughter seven years ago, Grief stricken by the melancholy of widowhood, he is making plans for an archaeological expedition to Asia. The former actress Irene Herms who used to act in Von Sala's plays is travelling through Vienna. Fichtner portrayed her in a famous portrait two decades ago. When Fichtner returns to Vienna after many years of travelling, the paths of three former colleagues and their ill-fated wives Gabriele and Irene cross paths once again. Memories and secrets transpire and come to light again; old flames, envies, fears, decisions are divulged, betrayals and regrets that will have (or have already had) a significant impact on the young lives of Felix and Johanna.
Der einsame Weg, 1904
Drama
Performance length is 1 hour and 35 minutes and has no pause.
Creators
Translator
Amalija Maček
Director
Dorian Šilec Petek
Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931), one of the most influential representatives of the Viennese fin-de-siecle art, was a physician, novelist, avid diarist, and a man whom Freud considered to be his Doppelgänger. Schnitzler is said to have reached intuitively in his writing similar conclusions about human nature as did Freud in his scientific studies.
Schnitzler often explored the psychology of characters and was often deemed controversial for his frank description on sexuality, writing about death and dealing with the controversial subject of anti-Semitism.
His characters are typical of the turn-of-the-century Vienna and the circles in which he moved, featuring doctors, actresses, soldiers, seducers, innocent girls, artists.
The Lonely Way, a play about egoism and loneliness is often considered to be his unspairing self-portrait which, he claimed, led him to shed “tears of despair”. The play premiered at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin in 1904. It will be staged on the Small Stage by a young director Dorian Šilec Petek who directed Ivan Vyrypaev's Unbearably Long Embrace in the 2020/2021 season.
Opening night 27 May 2022