I love to see regional theatres doing European classics. And I happen to think Arthur Schnitzler's Anatol, written in 1891, is a masterly study of a Viennese Don Juan. But even I would admit that Paul Jepson's production has to work hard to communicate Schnitzler's peculiar comic delicacy in the wide open spaces of the Nottingham Playhouse.
Watching Schnitzler's play is like seeing Freud in action: it's a study of the manic insecurity and child-like ego of the compulsive seducer. In seven episodic playlets we watch the aristocratic Anatol, who describes himself as "a frivolous melancholic", seeking a fidelity in women that he himself disowns.
In one scene he puts his 21-year-old partner under hypnosis only to funk the fatal question about her loyalty. Later he dubs his married mistress a coquette when she refuses to abscond with him. And, wining and dining a balletic lover, he is appalled when she pre-emptively reveals that it is she who has been two-timing him - that, in Anatol's world, is the male prerogative.
Schnitzler, a doctor and neurologist by profession, brilliantly pins down the Don Juan's dilemma: that he craves sex, fears commitment and, in order to avoid rejection, has to be the first to terminate a relationship. At a time when British drama was still shrouded in sexual reticence, Schnitzler writes with clinical accuracy about lust's melancholy and the instability of the male ego.
But he also captures the precise atmosphere of fin-de-siècle Vienna, where the sweet suburban girl was regarded as easy prey by urban lechers and where social masks concealed a weary dissipation. He perfectly conveys the genius loci, which is why I always thought it a mistake for David Hare to update Reigen as The Blue Room.
Jepson's production and Michael Robinson's translation, first performed at London's Gate Theatre, here anchor Anatol's action squarely in 1890s Vienna; and Christopher Oram's designs, with their high neo-classical windows and decorative imperial eagles, convey exactly the right air of arid opulence. But the actors are forced to over-project an essentially intimate play. Duncan Duff's Anatol has a barking tetchiness rather than the veiled anxiety that is Anatol's natural mode. And although Karen Drury (of Brookside fame) plays all seven of his partners with genuine versatility, she also is forced to push too hard.
Significantly, both are at their best in a bitter-sweet, downstage encounter when they become Christmas shoppers who pass briefly in the night. But the most rounded performance, in every sense, comes from Mike Hayley who, as the sceptical friend indispensable to all heartless seducers, suggests a particularly sleek porpoise. He seems blissfully at home in Schnitzler's world and makes you long to see the British theatre get to serious grips with the Viennese master.
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