In the town of Slurry, New York, post-war recession has bitten.
Claire Zachanassian, improbably beautiful and impenetrably terrifying, returns to her hometown as the world's richest woman. The locals hope her arrival signals a change in their fortunes, but they soon realise that prosperity will only come at a terrible price…
Friedrich Dürrenmatt's visionary revenge play, one of the great achievements of modern German-language theatre, has been transported to mid-twentieth-century America by the acclaimed playwright Tony Kushner.
This revelatory new adaptation of The Visit opened in the Olivier auditorium of the National Theatre, London, in February 2020, directed by Jeremy Herrin, and starring Lesley Manville and Hugo Weaving.
Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990) was a Swiss playwright, novelist, and essayist whose satiric, almost farcical tragicomic plays were central to the post-World War II revival of German theatre.
His plays include The Visit (Der Besuch der alten Dame, 1956), which came to prominence in the English-speaking world in its original English version by acclaimed playwright, author and critic Maurice Valency (1903–1996); and The Physicists (Die Physiker, 1962).
Tony Kushner is an American playwright and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1993 for his play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.
Tony Kushner's other plays include A Bright Room Called Day; Hydriotaphia, or The Death of Dr. Brown; The Illusion, adapted from the play by Pierre Corneille; Slavs!; Homebody/Kabul; Caroline, or Change, a musical with composer Jeanine Tesori; The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures; and The Visit, adapted from the play by Friedrich Dürrenmatt.
His translations include S. Y. Ansky's The Dybbuk; Bertolt Brecht's The Good Person of Sezuan and Mother Courage and Her Children; and the libretto for Hans Krása and Adolf Hoffmeister's Brundibár, a children's opera for which he wrote a curtain-raiser, But the Giraffe!
He wrote the screenplays for Mike Nichols's film of Angels in America and for Steven Spielberg's Munich and Lincoln.
His books include The Art of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to the Present; Brundibar, with illustrations by Maurice Sendak; and Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, co-edited with Alisa Solomon.
Among many honours, Kushner is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, two Tony Awards, three Obie Awards, two Evening Standard Awards, an Olivier Award, an Emmy Award, two Oscar nominations, and the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2012, he was awarded a National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama.
