Tony Kushner undoubtedly thought that in adapting The Visit, or The Old Lady Comes to Visit, Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s first-rate but all-too-rarely revived 1956 tragicomedy, he could grab the chance to comment obliquely on rapidly deteriorating justice under the current American administration.
It hasn’t quite worked out that way for a play that also operates as a thriller. The comedy strands are more difficult to discern. Nevertheless, Dürrenmatt insisted it is a comedy. (Remember that Anton Chekhov maintained as well that his plays are comedies, and William Shakespeare designated his often melancholic comedies when the works had, at least, somewhat happy endings.) Perhaps, though, Swiss-born and seeing The Visit first performed in Germany, Dürrenmatt is indicating the differences among various countries’ perceptions of what constitutes comedy.
Kushner places his version in the United States, specifically upper New York, and in a desolate fictional town, called Slurry (not a bad translation for the German “Gullen“). The year is 1955, as a reference to the East of Eden movie suggests. It’s here—and after a long expository scene in which locals bemoan their economic plight—that Claire Zachanassian (Lesley Manville), the richest woman in the world, arrives.
Actually, Claire—welcomed as “Clairie” on a banner the townsfolks wave at the train station—isn’t just arriving, she’s returning. Years earlier she was drummed out of Slurry for giving birth to an out-of-wedlock daughter, whose father, Alfred III (Hugo Weaving), denied responsibility and coerced friends to lie for him.
She was driven into a life of prostitution during which she eventually accumulated rich husbands and their money. (Kushner doesn’t include as many of these details as Dürrenmatt does.) Having also suffered incidents requiring replacement legs, she’s come back on a cane but wearing stunning clothes (costume designer Moritz Junge did the rich and poor wardrobes) to offer Slurry and Mayor Nicholas Herckheimer (Nicholas Woodeson) one billion dollars. (This, in 1955!) She’s offering it on one condition: that the townspeople kill Alfred.
The words are hardly out of her mouth and the Slurry crowd has only just calmed down from awed response when Mayor Herckheimer declares the town cannot be bought. He rejects the overwhelming sum outright, to which Claire Zachanassian simply says, to end the first of the play’s three acts, “I’ll wait.”
So will the audience, for here is introduced one of the challenges Dürrenmatt offers—and now Kushner, regularly known to believe that more is more. Only the least show-savvy patrons won’t see just where the old lady’s visit is leading. And even those few will twig to it in the definitely compelling first scene of the second act when the customers at Alfred’s notions store are clustering in fancy new shoes and pressing him to let them open charge accounts as they’ve been doing everywhere else.
Alfred Ill certainly spots where the ill (pun intended) wind is blowing, which establishes the remaining thrust of The Visit. Alfred tries what he can to denature the gathering storm. His futile efforts constitute much of the act and include a sequence where Alfred comes to the train station with a small valise but is surrounded by his increasingly less conflicted neighbors. He decides not to board—for reasons Kushner doesn’t succeed in making believable.
So there’s that train-station false ending, which accounts for one of this production’s problems. The first is the usually reliable director Jeremy Herrin’s presenting act one almost as a vaudeville. (Is this his idea of hewing to Dürrenmatt’s comedy categorization?) When in act three sentiment has finally turned against Alfred and a town meeting is held to vote on his fate—strictly in favor of “justice” and “not money”—the segment is gussied up in a skit of inane media coverage.
Another drawback is that Kushner especially misses out on the depth of the tragicomedy’s romance. Hinted at but not made clear is the unspoken but unmistakable love Claire and Alfred retain. Late in the third act, they go to a clearing in the woods to reminisce. As a reflection on Claire’s inflexibility, it’s undeniably important that their still fresh feelings for each other are demonstrated. At best, Kushner only sketches in that delicate memory. This is a significant loss. Perhaps Herrin’s unceasing heavy mood is partially to blame for the missed chance.
(In 1958, when Peter Brook helmed the play’s American premiere in the Maurice Valency translation, Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt unforgettably depicted the abiding Claire-Alfred bond, their being of one mind. The effect is attainable.)
Due to the script’s lapses, the 28-member cast is able to give their performances not much more than two-dimensional weight on Vicki Mortimer’s looming set and under Paule Constable’s dark lighting and with Paul Arditti’s atmospheric sound. As Claire, the estimable Manville (bravo to her Ghosts a couple years ago), is more than sufficiently flinty throughout. As suggested above, however, she’s unable to reach other important attitudes the script doesn’t encourage.
Large and lumbering, Weaving does well at conveying Alfred’s growing fear and his ultimate succumbing to the inevitable. Woodeson’s mayor is a likable irritant. As blind eunuchs to Claire and Alfred’s court liars, Paul Gladwin as Loby and Louis Martin as Doby are properly synchronized silly-billies. The always outstanding Sara Kestelman gives the best turn as an alcoholic schoolteacher with the initially clearest mind about the inevitable outcome.
And here’s a bit of praise not intended to be condescending to the rest of production: The finest staff contribution is the music composed by Paul Englishby and conducted by Malcolm Edmonstone. It skillfully conjures moods of 1950 romanticized jazz. Call it Music to Watch a Tragicomedy By.
In the final analysis, Kushner makes his and Dürrenmatt’s point about justice habitually losing out in any competition with money—as is nowadays occurring globally. Whether Kushner is doing full justice to Dürrenmatt’s The Visit is another question entirely.
The Visit opened February 13, 2020, at the National (London) and runs through May 13. Tickets and information: nationaltheatre.org.uk
