About us > Past productions > 2002/03 > Fräulein Else
Fräulein Else
adapted by francesca faridany from the novella by arthur schnitzler
directed by stephen wadsworth
parallel season | thrust stage
february 28–march 28, 2003
world premiere
Running time: 90 minutes, no intermission
“If the waiter serves that black coffee to the old gentleman, everything’s fine; if he takes it to the young bridal couple in the corner, everything’s lost.”
Fräulein Else, a young bourgeois woman of delightful beauty and bittersweet wit, runs headlong into a horrible trap while vacationing at an Italian spa. Propelled by her family’s desperate attempts to garner financial security, Fräulein Else is encouraged to betray intuition and embrace the unthinkable. Adapted and performed by well-known Berkeley Rep actress Francesca Faridany (An Ideal Husband, The Oresteia, Much Ado about Nothing) and directed by Stephen Wadsworth (Triumph of Love, An Ideal Husband, Changes of Heart, The Oresteia), Fräulein Else illuminates the entrapment of a young woman’s mind and soul by the regulations and strictures of a society overcome by decadence and patriarchal conventionality.
