Visit

The Visit by Friedrich Dürrenmatt
2009

Crew
Directed by MARTIN LEONARD
Produced by ZARA RADFORD

Plot
The play centers on the fictional Central-European town of Güllen - Guellen (Swiss-German for "manure"), (the exact location is deliberately obscured to emphasise Dürrenmatt's point that the events could/would happen anywhere) which was always formerly a humdrum center of culture but has in the past few decades decayed into bankruptcy. When the play opens, the town is preparing a celebration of the arrival of Claire Zachanassian, a former resident who had since attained an incredibly great fortune and is coming back to visit.
She arrives with her fiancé (it is mentioned repeatedly that she has had many more), and after some general festivities on the part of the townspeople she announces the true reason she has come to visit: when she was young she was impregnated by her boyfriend Alfred Ill (Anton Schill in some translations), who, at the paternity suit, denied the charges and bribed two drunks to testify that they had slept with Claire, and she was shamed out of the town and eventually forced into prostitution. Now that she has become rich, she will give the town half of a billion, and half a billion divided among the citizens, if they kill Alfred Ill, who over the years became one of Güllen's most popular townspeople. (The specific unit of currency is unmentioned in the original text, one English translation presents the reward in pounds.)
The townspeople initially unanimously refuse Claire's offer, but soon they start to buy things on credit, expensive things, even from Ill's own store, as if they expect some new source of income in the future. Ill notices this and becomes troubled. The townspeople's rhetoric of support behind Ill slowly but surely changes, and they ultimately speak of the "justice" Claire seeks. The town schoolteacher holds out against the punishment, long after even the town's mayor, pastor, and police officer speak of justice, but in the end even the schoolteacher turns on Ill and joins the crowd.
The town holds a public ceremony in celebration of Claire's endowment, complete with the world press reporting. Though many of the town's prominent citizens speak about the importance of justice, none mention Ill or his soon-to-be execution.
Ill is killed during a ceremony. All the press, women, and children leave for coffee. The men crowd around Ill and quickly turn off the lights. When the lights come back on, Ill is found lying on the floor, dead. The doctor claims it was a heart attack, fulfilling one of several ominous prophesies made by Claire in the first Act to the, at the time, bemused townspeople. Then the mayor receives the check for one billion (eine Milliarde).
The dark tone suddenly gives way to a seemingly prosperous, cheerful ending for the townspeople. But this façade falls away and we see a glimpse of a fear felt by the townspeople about the future.
Ironically, one could argue that the only person who truly grieves Ill's passing is not Ill's wife or one of his children, but Claire Zachanassian herself. The revenge she sought for years was finally fulfilled, but she is left unsatisfied.
In the play, Dürrenmatt is highly critical of the church. The character of the priest is one of the weakest, choosing to hide behind ceremony and rhetoric, rather than actually trying to help Ill or guide the townspeople. Instead the most moral character is that of the teacher. He is the only one who tries to prevent the death of Ill, but eventually he too realizes that it is inevitable and is forced to turn to drink.
The play is written in a kind of resigned, slow manner that reflects the state of the town after their gradual ruin (which is revealed around the middle of the play to have been intentionally brought on by Zachanassian). It is generally seen as a treatise on corrupting influence of money, but there is a lot of potential in the play for varying interpretations, both in meaning and in production. It remains, more than fifty years after its writing, a mainstay of Western theater.

King's Players

The Drama and Theatre Society of King's College London