by Jenny Magnus
Round & Round revolves around one woman and three men in a tangled story of overlapping love and life relationships and the intoxication of power. Performing on a giant lazy-susan set made to resemble a rotting wedding cake, the characters twist around one another in a cycle of love and attraction.
Somewhat influenced by Arthur Schnitzler's Der Reigen and Pierre Choderlos de Laclos's Les Liaisons dangereuses, Round & Round is a bedroom farce; the formal comings and goings are based in the classic farce structures. However, the characters have an underlying struggle to be dominant, or to recognize their submissions, a process that seems to become more and more grave as one ages.
When contemplating the play anew, we found mortality to be an ever-nearing specter, lending urgency to questions of attachment and detachment. If we are in fact trapped on our karmic lazy susans, can there ever be rest and stillness and grace? Or must these characters just turn about again, endlessly stuck in their ouroboros-ing machinations, their alchemical relationships reacting in the crucible of limited repertoires, growing into older versions of themselves, performing their relationships instead of truly experiencing them? Or, can they actually... change?
