David Hare's The Blue Room has been "freely adapted" from Dr. Arthur Schnitzler's La Ronde which in turn was based on a series of two-character sketches Schnitzler wrote in 1896 entitled Reigen. At the time, Schnitzler's scenes were deemed near pornographic. The author claimed he never intended his sketches to be performed publicly but simply to be shared among friends. When the vignettes were finally pulled together on the stage for the first time in Vienna in 1921, police closed the performance. The same year, in Berlin, actors performing the work were hauled into court and subjected to a trial on obscenity charges. In a social turnabout years later, director Max Ophuls's 1950 film version of La Ronde, became a cult classic, an appealing blend of nostalgia, enchantment, and titillation.

Sex still sells, and when word went out in 1998 that the well-known screen siren Nicole Kidman was starring in...