Customer Reviews

The Visit: A Tragi-Comedy

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"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."

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.

In "Visit" (Der Besuch der Alten Dame, original title in German), Durrenmatt takes the reader on what starts like some innocent journey, a simple walk down memory lane. But the journey quickly becomes very sombre as the characters make a generous display of all those sides of the human soul that none of us feel very comfortable with: revenge (half a century later), fear, cowardliness, greed, and group-think that can lead to murder.

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.

Like Bertholt Brecht, Friedrich Duerrenmatt (1921-1990) was a proponet of "epic theatre," a style of drama in which the audience is not so much asked to identify with the characters and story but to contemplate them in an detached manner and thereby arrive a certain intellectual and moral conclusions. Although he was the author of several notable dramas, he is not well known outside his native Switzerland and German-speaking Europe--with one exception: Der Besuch der alten Dame, known in English as THE VISIT.

First staged in 1956, it became internationally famous in the late 1950s in a production staged by Peter Brook starring Afred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, which had a successful Broadway run and which toured extensively; it was also filmed, with considerably less success, in 1964 by director Bernhard Wicki and starring Ingrid Bergman and Anthony Quinn. Maurice Valency performed the translation for the Lunt-Fontanne stage version, and for many years his extremely free adaptation was the only English-language version in print. The Patrick Bowles version offered here, however, is much more accurate in translation--and therefore considerably darker in tone.

The story concerns a tiny town which has fallen on very hard times, but which has hopes in the form of a visit from the incredibly wealthy Claire Zachanassian, a woman who was born and raised in the town and who has now decided to make a return visit. Although a distinctly grotesque figure, Claire has a reputation for generosity, and upon her arrival she does indeed announce her intention to endow her hometown with riches beyond imagination. There is, however, one catch: in return, she demands the death of Anton Schill, the lover who wronged her many years ago. The community is outraged and refuses to comply... at least at first. As the play progresses, however, the citizens (including Schill's own family) begin to dream of what they could do with all that money. Is Claire's demand really so unreasonable after all?

Duerrenmatt insisted that his play was a comedy, and it is indeed quite funny, albeit in a distinctly grotesque sort of way. At the same time, however, it is quite obviously a parable on the natures of revenge and greed. Indeed, Claire's revenge is not so much on Schill as it is upon the town itself, as she forces them to faulter through greed by presenting them with a choice between morality and immorality. Although extremely witty, THE VISIT may also be described as deeply cynical, and more than one critic has flatly described it as evil, despicable, and profoundly unsavory. Whatever the case, it is a truly remarkable play, quite unlike the usual fare you'll find haunting either Broadway or the local community theatre. It has also been extremely influential over the years, with perhaps the most obvious example being Arthur Kopit's OH DAD, POOR DAD, MAMA'S HUNG YOU IN THE CLOSET AND I'M FEELING SO SAD. Strongly recommended for fans of far-out theatre.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

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

In Durrenmatt's *The Visit* a hideous--and hideously wealthy--old woman returns to the town of her long-ago youth to avenge a past wrong. Unaware of her intentions, everyone in Guellen is excited at the news of her imminent arrival, but none more so than the old lady's old flame--the shabby shopkeeper Alfred Ill who volunteers to be her personal guide during the visit. Expecting that her return, and Alfred's solicitous attention, will mean a revival of the town's fortunes after years of hard times, the inhabitants of Guellen are nonetheless staggered by the generosity of Claire Zachanassian's offer. But their joy turns to dismay when they discover the one condition the old woman has placed on making them all wealthy beyond their wildest dreams. The good folk of Guellen must deliver up one of their own for sacrifice: her old lover, Alfred Ill.

Will the townsfolk murder Alfred for the money--and the "good" of Guellen--or not? Durrenmatt not only sustains the suspense of this situation throughout most of this rather lengthy three-act play, but, even more surprising, he renders it chillingly plausible. One is reminded of Shirley Jackson's classic story *The Lottery*--a similar atmosphere of claustrophobic, predestined dread prevails in *The Visit,* a sense that there is no escape from the judgment of the community of which one is a member. Indeed, it seems if one is properly socialized one internalizes that judgment and delivers oneself up accordingly for there is no life outside of the community. Such a "voluntary" death becomes a sacrifice and one lives on in the benefit bestowed upon the community. So does society sustain itself by eating its own.

What the old lady wants is justice for a wrong done to her in Guellen long ago. But that desire for justice--and the hurt that goes with it--has hardened over time into an implacable thirst for vengeance that nothing but blood will satisfy. Even within the play, as well as in Durenmatt's postscript, Claire Z. is likened to Medea and it's an apt comparison. Claire is older, wealthier, a confidante of princes and presidents, a serial bride, full of wit and dry humor, and her anger is considerably colder than that of the legendary scorned madwoman of classical literature--colder and thus more lethal.

Aside from Claire Z, who has hardened beyond humanity altogether, *The Visit* is primarily a tale about human weakness--about the temptation for the pleasures of this world and the rationalizations we devise to grab them when the opportunity presents itself. For behind the high-sounding principles and moral outrage of the good people of Guellen is the drive to self-aggrandizement that motivates all of us. Or, as *The Visit* memorably points out--all of us but the rare individual who acknowledges the guilt we all share and prefer to locate solely in our neighbors, the rare individual who, when it's time to point out the source of evil in the world, has the astounding courage to point at himself.

"The Visit" is a play I've never seen, only read. I read it first in high school, leaving me with goosebumps then. It still has that power, now. I can think of no other tale that expresses the power of bitter revenge better than this one. I remember reading somewhere that this was done originally on stage here by Lunt and Fontaine--wouldn't that have been something to see!

I wonder, though, why the 1964 movie starring Anthony Quinn and Ingrid Bergman is never mentioned, and has never been released on video or DVD? I saw it 30 years ago and found it chilling in its own way, though not matching exactly the play.

Durrenmatt's keen sense of the theatre of the absurd is showcased in this stellar play. A play that crosses the boundaries of our imagination and captures the essense of the human soul. Terrifying whilst remaining humourous, it allows each reader to try to justify their wayward human emotions.

This book, although somewhat disturbing, is a good read for anyone who desires a look at how humans continually put material objects before their own fellow human beings. Layered in "sick" comedy, The Visit brings the ultimate desire for retribution to life, as well as depicting how even normal people can become vicious with revenge, even when they are not the victim. Furthermore, this book depicts how one person can change the lives of other's lives drastically, because of power and money. When read in the context of seeking the reality of life, the desire for riches, the greed of the desperate, and the need to be "someone" and be defined by worldy possessions, this book truly gives insight, with a bizarre but intriguing tale.