Love is in the air at the Benisan Pit theater in Tokyo's Koto Ward. There, downtown by the Sumida River, Theatre Project Tokyo is staging its latest production, "The Blue Room," based on Viennese playwright Arthur Schnitzler's "Reigen."
When it was written in 1900, the piece was unperformable due to its erotic content. When, in 1921, Schnitzler finally decided to go ahead with a staging, the premiere in Vienna ended prematurely when police brought down the curtain.
It wasn't until 1950 that the play finally broke the chains of censorship, when French director Max Ophls made it into the hit movie "La Ronde" -- so called because it depicts a game of sexual roundelay, in which a single pair of actors in changing roles play out a sequence of encounters.