A paraphrase of Mayerling Incident, the double suicide that took place in 1889 at the Imperial hunting lodge at Mayerling in the Vienna Woods , where the Austrian Crown Prince Rudolf shot himself and his nubile mistress, Mary Vetsera. The story is dramatized and filmed several times and has the character of a contemporary myth. It is this myth, the artist David seeks to reinstate by hypnotizing first one, then another woman to commit suicide with him in a staging that copies the Mayerling Incident. As the play begins, he is dead, alone.
