Sweet Nothings

(This) new version by David Harrower, an exquisite production by Luc Bondy, offers a damning portrait of Viennese decadence without ever reverting to overt moralising.

- Michael Billington, The Guardian

At a party, a man flirts with a woman and life seems full of joy. Until the doorbell rings and the husband enters the room...

The celebrated director Luc Bondy (Zurich, 1948) returns to the Young Vic with his production of Liebelei, the Arthur Schnitzler classic, in a new version by Olivier award-winner, David Harrower. An exceptional cast in this co-production with the Wiener Festwochen and the Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen is joined by other talents such as Karl-Ernst Herrmann (who works regularly with Peter Stein) and Moidele Bickel (nominated for a Costume Design Oscar for her work in the film Queen Margot and responsible for costume design in the Michael Hanneke film, The White Ribbon).

Sweet Nothings is a revised version of the fin-de-siècle drama by Austrian writer, Arthur Schnitzler, a contemporary of Freud, chronicler of Vienna life at the beginning of the last century and author of Dream Story, the novella on which Stanley Kubrick's last film, Eyes Wide Shut, was based. Bondy's production updates the language and stage setting but keeps intact the power of desire, the cruelty of betrayal and the enormous vulnerability of the lovers.

www.youngvic.org
www.festwochen.at
www.ruhrfestspiele.de