Friedrich Durrenmatt is considered one of the most significant playwrights of ou
r time. During the years of the Cold War, arguably only Beckett, Camus, Sartre,
and Brecht rivaled him as a presence in European letters. In this ALTA National
Translation Award-winning new translation of what many critics consider his fine
st play, Joel Agee gives a fresh lease to a classic of twentieth-century theater
. Durrenmatt once wrote of himself: I can best be understood if one grasps grote
squeness, and The Visit is a consummate, alarming Durrenmatt blend of hilarity,
horror, and vertigo. The play takes place somewhere in Central Europe and tells
of an elderly millionairess who, merely on the promise of her millions, swiftly
turns a depressed area into a boom town. But the condition attached to her large
sse, which the locals learn of only after they are enmeshed, is murder. Durrenma
tt has fashioned a macabre and entertaining parable that is a scathing indictmen
t of the power of greed and confronts the perennial questions of honor, loyalty,
and community.
