The Visit: A Tragi-Comedy

Rating:
Summary: What would you do for money?
Review: "The Visit: A Tragi-comedy," by Friedrich Durrenmatt, has been translated from German into English by Patrick Bowles. This three-act play has a copyright date of 1956, and the English translation has a copyright date of 1962.

This is an outrageous tale with a strong satiric flavor. The story takes place in Guellen, a European town that has fallen into economic depression and decay. As the play opens the townspeople are eagerly awaiting the arrival of Claire Zachanassian, a hometown girl who has gone on to become super-wealthy. The townspeople hope that her financial generosity will save Guellen. But from early on in the first act, Claire hints that she has a sinister, even deadly, ultimate goal.

This is a colorful, richly peopled dark comedy. It's full of arresting dialogue, suspense, and grotesque characters. A major theme is the tension between capitalistic greed and the Western humanistic tradition. The play is also about sex, lies, and injustice.

With her artificial body parts, bizarre retinue, and colorful backstory, Claire is one of the most remarkable characters in the history of drama--perhaps the most commanding female stage character since Lady Macbeth. She is charming yet sinister, grotesque yet oddly sympathetic. The creation of this character is, in my opinion, a great triumph for Durrenmatt.

For companion texts, I would recommend the following: "Rene's Flesh," by Virgilio Pinera; "Bedside Manners," by Luisa Valenzuela; and "The Doorman," by Reinaldo Arenas. Each of these works is, in its own way, as bizarre and stimulating as "The Visit."

Rating:
Summary: Excellent.
Review: Friedrich Durrenmatt, The Visit (Grove, 1956)

Another excellent piece of work from Friedrich Durrenmatt, the story of The Visit takes place in a ..town in central Europe somewhere; the country is not given (the reasons should be obvious). As the town is on the verge of bankruptcy, with almost total unemployment and a pervasive sense of despair, one of the town's local folk made good comes back, hinting that she will give the town enough money to bail it out: get the factory working again, allow the stores to restock, that sort of thing. The night she arrives, she tells the townspeople that their expectations of the reasons for her visit are true, and that she will give them the money they need. She has one condition: she requires justice in the form of a lynch mob. She wants the townspeople to [take out] one of their own.

The revelation of the intended victim is the major twist here; in many ways, the play's climax is actually this scene, at the end of Act I, and the following two acts are a painfully drawn-out dénouement as we watch the townspeople's changing reactions to the woman and her demand. Unlike The Pledge, in which we see the gradual development of one man's madness, in this case we're given a woman who's arguably mad from the get-go (certainly, she's as obsessed as The Pledge's protagonist is at the end of that novel from long before the beginning of this play), and we watch the way her madness, combined with her wealth, affects the town around her over the course of a few days. Durrenmatt is a master at using small details to show how the community changes its views over a relatively short period of time, and even manages to make the rather horrific journey humorous at times (the play is defined as, and works as, a tragicomedy). We find ourselves alternately sympathizing with and horrified at the actions of the townspeople, and see no conflict in the two attitudes. A wonderful play.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: Hidden under the multitudes of todays so-called prose, this play nevertheless stands out as a blue diamond among bleak stones.

Rating:
Summary: revenge and the human spirit
Review: Impoverished townspeople are hungry and eager for an economic boost... what will they do to please a potential benefactor? A benefactress, a citizen from the town's past, returns for a visit. As it turns out, the wealthy woman will not donate freely, but only in return for the townspeople exacting some horrible deed. As in his other plays, Durrenmatt wrote a fascinating plot which examines themes like revenge and responsibility.

Durrenmatt novices should probably start with THE VISIT, his most famous play... if you've enjoyed THE VISIT, I will recommend my favorite among Durrenmatt's plays: ROMULUS THE GREAT, which is scarce, but well worth a read.

THE VISIT was adapted for the screen as a movie entitled THE HYENAS, set in Africa.

Incidentally, the author's novel THE PLEDGE was also made into a movie, starring Jack Nicholson.

ken32

Rating:
Summary: revenge and the human spirit
Review: Impoverished townspeople are hungry and eager for an economic boost... what will they do to please a potential benefactor? A benefactress, a citizen from the town's past, returns for a visit. As it turns out, the wealthy woman will not donate freely, but only in return for the townspeople exacting some horrible deed. As in his other plays, Durrenmatt wrote a fascinating plot which examines themes like revenge and responsibility.

Durrenmatt novices should probably start with THE VISIT, his most famous play... if you've enjoyed THE VISIT, I will recommend my favorite among Durrenmatt's plays: ROMULUS THE GREAT, which is scarce, but well worth a read.

THE VISIT was adapted for the screen as a movie entitled THE HYENAS, set in Africa.

Incidentally, the author's novel THE PLEDGE was also made into a movie, starring Jack Nicholson.

ken32

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant Blend of Comedy and Tragedy
Review: Somehow I had managed to remain totally unfamiliar with Friedrich Durrenmatt until I stumbled across a used copy of The Physicists a few months ago. Fortune has again favored me; I just located a copy of The Visit, a tragi-comedy by Durrenmatt.

Friedrich Durrenmatt created his imaginative tragicomedies in the 1950s and 1960s. His quirky plots, eccentric characters, and dark humor remind me of stories by Kurt Vonnegut.

The pessimism found in Durrenmatt's plays is not entirely surprising as the European psyche was slow to recover from the devastation of WWII. What did surprise me was the remarkable ability of Friedrich Durrenmatt to blend comedy with this pessimism. He uses comedy to entertain us and we do laugh. But, nonetheless, we readers remain aware that this comedy, no matter how funny, is only a superficial layer covering a more serious topic.

Fifty years have passed and Claire Zachanassian, now a multi-millionairess, returns to her childhood home, the small town of Guellen, not due to nostalgia, but to exact revenge. She offers the people of Guellen a fortune in return for justice, that is, the killing of her onetime sweetheart.

Claire Zachanassian is an intriguing character, rich enough to do what ever she desires. She seemingly approaches revenge in an disinterested, almost passive manner. Neither rational arguments nor pleading for compassion have any influence on her. In his short postscript Durrenmatt suggests that her role might best be enacted as a Greek tragic heroine, something like the legendary Medea.

I highly recommend the two plays, The Visit and The Physicists. I am already looking for his other plays.