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The Visit [PICK]
January 24, 2007
By Eric Marchese

From among the many translations of Friedrich Dürrenmatt's well-known
but seldom-seen 1956 play, Rude Guerrilla opts for Patrick Bowles' 1962
version, an auspicious choice in that this translation retains the
play's original setting, its era in history, and its distinctly European
flavor. As a parable about greed, Dürrenmatt's text makes its case
inexorably, as a now-wealthy woman famed for serial matrimony to wealthy
gents returns to her hometown of Cessopolis, the only poor town in all
of postwar Switzerland. She offers to endow the entire town and all its
individuals with her riches, but for a price: They have to agree to
murder one of their fellow citizens, an aging gent whose perjury in a
paternity trial 45 years earlier doomed the woman to prostitution,
turning her life into one long act of revenge against men.

Focal to director Caprice Spencer Rothe's concept is the use of masks
for the story's more than 40 characters. Sculpted by Rothe, Sharon
Moore, R.J. Romero, and Clare V. Solly, each stark, white mask, in
commedia dell'arte fashion, covers all but the actor's mouth, fixing
each character with a distinctive emotional tenor. In line with this are
broadly stylized characterizations that paint this Swiss town as being
as comedically rich as The Simpsons' Springfield. Leading the greedy
townsfolk to the well is Claire, given regal bearing and expressive,
quasi-Kate Hepburn delivery by Jill Cary Martin. With his potbelly,
sad-sack mask and world-weary, C. Montgomery Burns voice is Jay Michael
Fraley as Alfred, the man Claire once loved but now wants killed.
Rothe's entire cast is spot-on, and her elaborate staging--aided by
Solly’s and Peter Balgoyen's costumes, David Chorley’s sound, and
Lindsey Suits' lighting--magnifies the pressures of impending wealth and
the inhuman things people might be willing to do for it.
A Visit to the depths of greed

Rude Guerrilla uses masks, a cartoony tone to inform Friedrich Durrenmatt’s darkly comic 1956 parable.

By ERIC MARCHESE SPECIAL TO THE REGISTER

Rude Guerrilla Theater Company could have chosen from among several translations of “The Visit,” Friedrich Durrenmatt’s well-known but seldomseen 1956 play.
That the Santa Ana troupe settled upon the 1962 version by Patrick Bowles proves a propitious choice - as much so as its use of Caprice Spencer Rothe as director.
Bowles’ adaptation retains the play’s original setting, its historical era (the mid-1950s) and its European flavor, while Rothe puts her own distinctive imprint on this darkly comic parable about the nature of human greed.
Durrenmatt’s story revolves around Cessopolis (“cesspool”), the only poor town in all of postwar Switzerland. The town’s only claims to fame? “Goethe spent the night here, Brahms composed a quartet here.”
Just scraping by, the town now eagerly awaits a visit from Claire Zachanassian (Jill Cary Martin), a onetime native unseen for decades. Famed for serial matrimony to wealthy gents, and now on her seventh husband, she is herself fabulously rich.
Upon her arrival, Claire offers the town a fortune, on one condition: They have to kill Alfred III (Jay Fraley) who, in a paternity trial 45 years earlier, engineered the false testimony that destroyed Claire’s life. Her offer, she notes, isn’t revenge: “I’m buying myself justice.” .
The mayor rejects Claire’s offer, telling her “We are a peaceful, civilized town.” Claire, however, knows the townsfolk won’t be able to resist the lure of wealth, so she begins wearing them down with a shower oflavish gifts. The character of Claire is ruthlessly funny in a Darwinian sense. Having survived numerous accidents, she touts herself as “unkillable.” Her most telling statements, though, regard matrimony. Of course she believes in happy marriage: “All my marriages are happy.” Husbands, she notes, “shouldn’t be useful - they’re just for show.”
Rothe’s elaborate staging magnifies the play’s theme that every man has his price. Her actors create broadly stylized comical voices to match each characterization’s distinctive emotional tenor, yielding a Swiss burg as wacky as “The Simpsons’ “ Springfield. Yet, despite its European feel, Cessopolis seems more like Chicago or New York City, an incongruity that makes this “Visit” all the funnier.
Focal to this staging’s concept is its use of commedia dell’arte-style masks for the more than 40 characters. Sculpted by Rothe, Sharon Moore, R.J. Romero and Clare V. Solly, the masks fix each character with looks of anxiety, woe and brainlessness - the former two a stark contrast with the comedic tone, the latter augmenting it.
Alfred’s visage of sadness is most startling, a mass of deep forehead and under-eye wrinkles that attest to his careworn life. The mayor's mask is also striking, sketching a sly, predatory look with its high cheekbones and hawk-like nose.
Rothe takes many of her cues from the script. When Claire and Alfred enter the woods of their youthful love affair, Durrenmatt fancifully has actors depict trees - so, when a choir is called for, Rothe gives us a quintet of actors with 10 sock puppets crooning “It’s a Small World” with nonsense lyrics, a pleasantly loopy touch.
Martin brings a regal, quasi-Katharine Hepburn aura to Claire, her expressive voice capturing nostalgia, ardor, impatience and myriad other qualities. Crystallizing Claire’s powerful station in life, she smokes stogies.
Fraley’s graying Alfred forms a worthy contrast, defined by a pot belly and a weary voice similar to “The Simpsons’ “ Mr. Burns. In the early scenes, Alfred chuckles with self-satisfaction, but by the play’s midpoint he’s reduced to a petrified figure resigned to his fate.
Hand-in.-hand with the masks are the actors’ cartoony voices. Brandon Kaspar lends a lofty tone to the mayor’s every pronouncement. With prim red specs and pencils shoved into her hair bun, Aimee Greenberg’s School Mistress speaks in high-toned diction. Rothe’s 10--person ensemble is spot-on, but Nick Laurrell distinguishes himself as, among others, Claire’s British, fishing-crazy Husband No.7 and Ronald Colman-like Husband No.8; a doctor with a voice like Peter Sellers’ Dr. Strangelove; and a nebbish with a Woody Allen-ish dialect.
Solly and Peter Balgoyen costume Claire in white suitcoat and skirt, red feather cap (for Claire’s red hair), pearls and an elegant cane. By contrast, the townsfolk wear uniformly monochromatic (tans, grays, browns, blues, olive drab) clothes, however welltailored. Lindsey Suits’ lighting complements Rothe’s all-purpose set, which uses metal scaffolding to suggest the train station, Alfred’s shop, the hotel and more. David Chorley’s soundtrack incorporates scads of classical selections and church organ music as well as clanging bells, a rushing locomotive train and numerous effects that help turn this “Visit” into a comic book-like satire on an epic scale.