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re: The Visit at WTF: my take on the show

Posted by:	BruceinIthaca 02:54 am EDT 08/16/14
In reply to:	re: The Visit at WTF: my take on the show - Glitter 11:19 pm EDT 08/15/14

Well, I just drove home from an eight hour round trip drive between Ithaca and Williamstown to see "The Visit" at tonight's (Friday's) performance. I thought it was an extraordinarily powerful "experience," on so many levels, many of which people less fatigued than I am at the moment have articulated (though my adrenalin kept me very alert all the way to the end of I-88!). First and last: Chita Rivera. What an amazing performance. Such a study in stillness and the body's way of speaking its history in a minimal number of movements and gestures. Of the six or so shows I've seen her in, I think the acting in this one may have been her greatest challenge. I know the show was originally conceived for Lansbury--whom I love as much I do Rivera--and she would have brought a different kind of energy and power to it, but Rivera made you believe in the younger self still contained within. I agree that the pas de deux was a magnificent dance--keenly choreographed and beautifully rendered. And, of course, Rivera brings all her decades as a dancer, singer, actor to the role, and she showed how any performer adapts to the passage of time and coming of age. Her final appearance just stunned me. I won't say anymore about it to avoid spoiling anything. It IS an adaptation. An adaptation always implies change--I studied adaptation with folks like Robert Breen and Frank Galati and while they remained "true in their fashion" to any text they adapted, there was also always room for their own point of view on the text. A few years ago, I was at a conference on disability and performance and, in my talk, I mentioned "The Visit" and Claire. The organizer had worked as a dramaturge on an avant-garde production and, as part of his work, found out that Durrenmatt had originally had a male Zachanassian returning home for revenge, but that, because of the troupe he was working with, he shifted it to a woman and the whole love/shame plot emerged. BTW, D's widow would never allow a man to play Claire, so one company had a woman present as Claire, but had the role acted by a man. Fascinating. Adaptation does not mean literal translation--it doesn't mean that in biological evolution. Things change. This adaptation focused more on the intimacy of the Claire-Anton relationship, and the townspeople became the social and political frame in which it was played out. It is a kind of dance of death. I know the production has been described as Brechtian, and I think that's apt. The actors both were and were not the characters (as the stylized makeup and costuming suggested to me) at the same time. In some ways, they reminded me a bit of the townsfolk in Shirley Jackson's story "The Lottery" or those engaged in a kind of pagan take on the Passionplay. Their work was disciplined and lacking in any attempts at egotism, at least to me. I have not seen any earlier version, so I have nothing to compare with. I thought the score functioned well--less generally hummable than most of Kander and Ebb, but if one leaves the theatre after this show humming the catchy melodies, something has gone terribly wrong--with the production, or the audience, or that place where both meet. I will remember the 11 o'clock equivalent "Love and Only Love," for its somewhat Weillian-tune is a haunting summary of the play's themes and, in a sense, the leading lady's life in the theatre. Rees took a bit of getting used to for me (in part because I saw him last in "The Winslow Boy," where he was not being a terribly good husband to my old friend Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio). His characterization verged on madness at times, which worked in this adaptation--his final choices in some ways are a madman's demonstration of love. I think there were enough nods to the grotesque and German expressionistic horror films (the eunuchs, the omnipresent coffin) to honor that element of the original. And I did find myself thinking in political and social terms as I watched the more intimate scenes--the idea that an individual's desire for revenge against another particular individual can only succeed when the economics (in the broadest sense) favor the individual. And that we, as humans, seem to rationalize inhuman behavior when it suits our own collective and individual needs. Not to be even more cliched than I may already have been, but it made me think of the feminist motto, "the personal is political." And vice versa. BTW, the "obstructed seat" became a nonissue. I would have missed the visuals of the trio on the catwalk (Rudi and the eunuchs), but it turned out that the person next to me had been split up from her son, who was sitting in the front row of the orchestra. I asked if they would like to sit together--they were eager to, so I was front row, a little house left. I know, I know, this act embodies the very Ayn Randian philosophy I abhor in theory--but it did make a family happy to be able to be next to each other and it made me less OCD about worrying about missing anything. The box seat would have been perfectly fine. I'd never been to WTF--and I don't recommend doing it the way I did (I did it partly on impulse and because I knew I would be going solo, so the fun of planning a festive weekend in the Berkshires was not there for me)--but I thought it a very lovely theatre, and the production values equal to those on Broadway. Now to bed.

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Next:	re: The Visit at WTF: my take on the show - BruceinIthaca 12:43 am EDT 08/17/14

Thread:	re: The Visit at WTF: my take on the show - BruceinIthaca 12:43 am EDT 08/17/14 re: The Visit at WTF: my take on the show - enoch10 11:25 pm EDT 08/16/14 re: The Visit at WTF: my take on the show - actor103 11:29 am EDT 08/16/14

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