‘The Visit’ @ Amphibian Stage
Photos by Evan Michael Woods
—Jan Farrington
“We are not in the jungle—we are in Europe!”
It’s a proud protest, but the words ring more hollow by the minute in Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s dark play The Visit (1956). At Amphibian Stage—in collaboration with UTA’s Department of Theatre and Dance— this well-regarded work (translated into many languages and adapted to film, opera, and musical theater) remains a fierce and atmospheric exploration of human illusions about our own rationality and goodness.
Written a few years after Hitler and Holocaust (Dürrenmatt watched the war as a college student in Switzerland, his home country), the world knew better by then how close the jungle could come.
The Visit of the Old Lady (Der Besuch der alten Dame) is the play’s full original title—and the “lady” in question is nothing like the funny old bat you might expect. Claire Zachanassian (Elly Lindsay) is a cigar-smoking billionairess (the world’s wealthiest woman, in fact), who returns abruptly to visit the home town she left decades ago. (She pulls the emergency cord on an express train to make it stop exactly where she wants.)
Everyone in the little town seems giddy at Claire’s coming. Strange, though: nobody seems to remember how she left.
Do the townspeople—mayor (Patrick Bynane), professor (Amanda Reyes), pastor (Michael Anthony Page), painter (Melissa Duffer), police chief (Laurel Whitsett), station master (Johanna Nchekwube), sacristan (Gwen Mowdy) and even a roving reporter (Jovane Caamaño)—have a touch of collective amnesia? (The mayor’s children, played by Kimberly Turner and Tanner Mobley, are too young to recall.) Even the “beloved” Anton Schill, owner of the town’s general store and Claire’s one-time lover, seems unruffled by the idea of approaching the girlfriend he brutally abandoned, pregnant and penniless…to ask for the sizeable donations Güllen now needs.
Claire does have a juicy proposition. She’ll be glad to revive the town with a billion or so—but only if they kill Anton for her peace of mind. (She’s brought a coffin along in her luggage.) The town officials are stunned. “We’d never, ever…ever,” they stammer. A billion, you say?
Dürrenmatt’s plays are notable for an edgy mix of tragic and comic, grotesque and satirical—and Claire’s strange entourage prepares us to expect almost anything. (The translation by Maurice Valency is crisply colloquial, finding humor where it can.) Her masked minions include murderers (she bought them off Death Row) and a pair of blind eunuchs (former townspeople who told lies about her and paid the price). Also along for the ride is the young and petulant Pedro (Caleb De La Torre), who may become husband No. 9 in a long string of non-Antons—though one of them made her rich.
Claire is carried through town in a painted chair once owned by Marie Antoinette, wearing outfits of increasing oddity and extravagance. Costumes (and masks?) are by Leah Mazur, as is the striking stylized set of mobile platforms, elaborately painted vintage flooring, and wide proscenium arch. Small dollhouse-like buildings are arranged (like a toy town) on either side of the arch. Adam Chamberlin’s precision lighting sends spotlights and shadows exactly where they’re needed on the often crowded stage.
Director Jay Duffer creates an atmosphere of controlled menace and disbelief. Lindsay as Claire is blunt and relentless; the only tenderness she shows is connected to Anton. She says she never stopped loving him through the years—but knows her love has become “something monstrous.” Lindsay is chilling, never more so than when she chirpily quizzes townspeople about their special skills: “Have you ever strangled a man?” she asks a muscle-bound local athlete. Bynane, Reyes and Page struggle as the town leaders who must think hardest about Claire’s devilishly tempting offer.
Stephenson pitches his performance very well, from Anton’s initial nostalgia at Claire’s return, to his uneasiness at the changed behavior of friends and neighbors. Panic and fear take him, then a sort of fatalism. It’s a measured and multi-faceted portrayal. In him we see traces of Claire’s lost lover, mixed with desperation and dignity as he finds himself the center of his town’s…interests.
It’s always a question: Why this play? Why now? Certainly we’re having our own issues with erratic billionaires, and seem to be in a time when dark impulses have the upper hand in politics, social cohesion, and even our ability to trust one another. And adding to it, a general sense (supported or not) that our lives are in a Güllen-y mess. Someone’s doing us wrong.
What would we do to make things great again? Who, or what would we destroy? I suspect having a beer with Friedrich Dürrenmatt would be an enlightening experience—though probably not a laugh riot.
WHEN: October 20-November 12, 2023
WHERE: 120 S. Main Street, Fort Worth TX
WEB: amphibianstage.com
