Theater Review—

‘Fraulein Else’ Takes Long Wharf Off Its Usual Course Of Good Choices

By Julie Stern

NEW HAVEN — Arthur Schnitzler was a Viennese doctor and playwright in turn of the century Vienna. Sigmund Freud was a Viennese doctor and writer in turn of the century Vienna. Freud read Schnitzler. Schnitzler read Freud. Each one apparently thought the other one was right on target.

Freud made a name for himself by treating cases of hysterical paralysis in seemingly healthy young bourgeois women. Using hypnosis and psychoanalysis he probed their unconscious minds to uncover crippling conflicts between their innermost sexual urges and the strict puritanical moral codes with which they had been raised. His conclusions created waves of shock and outrage across Europe.

Schnitzler wrote plays and stories that sought to portray the innermost thoughts of his characters in the form of a stream of consciousness that would reach literary fruition in the work of James Joyce. The sexual frankness of these thoughts sometimes led to the banning of his works.

If these notions are new to you, then perhaps you will find Long Wharf’s production of Fraulein Else daring and enthralling. Otherwise, you may be glad that it only lasts an hour and twenty-five minutes (with no intermission, for perhaps obvious reasons). If you’re still interested, performances continue until December 21.

Playwright Francesca Faridany translated and shaped Schnitzler’s novella for the stage, and then assumed the title role, under the enthusiastic and affectionate (based on the program notes) guidance of her husband-to-be, the director Stephen Wadsworth. While there are small parts for five other characters, the play is a tour-de-force for the main character, Fraulein Else.

Consisting almost entirely of a stream of consciousness monologue recited at a machine gun pace, the play explores the thoughts of a 19-year-old Viennese maiden on holiday in the Alps with her wealthy aunt and handsome cousin. Her thoughts (chiefly centering on fantasies involving every male in the hotel, from the porter to her cousin to the mountain guide, as well as most of the guests), are interrupted by the arrival of an urgent special delivery letter from her mother, saying that her father is about to be arrested for non-payment of gambling debts. Only she, Else, can save the beloved Papa, by submitting to the desires of a wealthy elderly art dealer who just happens to be staying at the hotel.

What should she do? What does she do? Is this happening at all or is it in fact a hysterical invention designed to rationalize her desire to walk naked through the hotel lobby? Is this device the playwright’s invention, designed to wake up those in the audience who have been lulled into restful sleep by the tinkling water sound of the stream?

Thomas Lynch has created a typical Long Wharf stunner of a set, involving feathery Alps superimposed on a fin de siecle  mountain hotel, and playwright-star Ms Faridany certainly pulls out all the stops in her portrayal, one that is so exhausting she has been forced to alternate performances with another actress.

In an age when the Internet has made pornographic material as pervasive as Bible stories, however, the whole idea seems kind of dated. Long Wharf is generally exciting and original in its productions, while remaining more mainstream and traditional than its crosstown rival, Yale Rep. There are times, though, when it chooses to bring back works from the 192os (George Kelly’s The and something by Arthur Wing Pinero come to mind) just to show that it can be done.

To paraphrase Joseph Conrad, sometimes the idea just gets degraded in the act.

(Curtain is Wednesday through Sunday evenings and weekend afternoons. A post-performance discussion is being offered on Tuesday, December 16. Tickets range from $38 to $55. Call 203-787-4282 for details.)