Vienna, 1900. The words conjure up an image of sex, sophistication and Strauss polkas. But Mark Rosenblatt's rediscovery of this astonishing Schnitzler play - written in 1912 - for the Last Waltz season, reminds us of the worm inside the apple. For Schnitzler's theme is nothing less than the anti-Semitism that corroded Viennese society and was to shape the century.
Schnitzler's eponymous hero runs a private teaching hospital. In the first act he refuses a Catholic priest admission to an ailing female patient. His reasons are strictly medical, as the girl is in a drug-induced euphoria, but, when she dies without receiving the last rites, Bernhardi becomes the victim of a political witch-hunt. He is accused of "religious agitation", arraigned in court and driven out by the anti-Jewish faction in his own hospital.
What makes the play thrilling is that Schnitzler exposes the poisonous nature of Viennese racism without exculpating his hero. You sense the virulent factionalism from the first scene when one of Bernhardi's diagnostic successes is greeted by his deputy with a murmur of: "Great celebrations in Israel, hmmn?" And Vienna's economic tensions are exemplified by the fact that 85% of the patients are Catholic yet the same amount of funding comes from the Jewish community.
But, while the victimised Bernhardi is dubbed in the press "the Dreyfus of the hospitals", Schnitzler shrewdly refuses to sanctify him. Bernhardi's crime is that, as he tells an opportunistic minister, "I don't care about politics." And Schnitzler's point is that political innocence is no defence in a society as divided as turn-of-the-century Vienna. Christopher Godwin hits the right note as Bernhardi by conveying both the doctor's fundamental decency and naive belief in the unassailability of truth.
Strong support comes from Dale Rapley as a vehemently anti-Semitic doctor, Deka Walmsley as an urbane civil servant and John Stahl as both a coat-turning minister and a passionately liberal optometrist. And even if Samuel Adamson's version occasionally lapses into the anchronistic vernacular, as in the minister's cry of "Fuck politics!", Rosenblatt's production not only brims with energy but reminds us of Schnitzler's ability to turn social observation into prophetic insight.
· Until May 7. Box office: 020-7503 1646.
