After a night of supposed passion, Marianne recounts her bizarre history with the author.  She used to live in an adjoining apartment and from a young age was fascinated by the author.  The real Stefan Zweig was well known in the 1920s and 1930s.  What she did, we would nowadays describe as stalking but that is too censorious a word as she seemed to have the innocence of a child.  Another actress (Jessie Gatward) plays Marianne’s younger self who haunts the proceedings in movement from Matthew Bourne’s collaborator, Michela Meazza. 

It seems that they met when Marianne was 18, ten years before but unusually Stefan has no memory of this.  The implication is that he was very promiscuous and doesn’t remember his sexual encounters, even those with women determined to seduce him. The performances are very good but the play is word heavy, even for its 70 minutes running time and it is hard to feel involved with this story of obsession and secrecy.  

As a post script, in 1934 Stefan Zweig moved to London and in 1940, to New York.  In 1942 he and his wife committed double suicide in Brazil.