Pasadena Playhouse’s “The Visit” Review: A Bleak Absurdist Tale Saved by Stellar Leads

When the “Amadeus” revival debuted at Pasadena Playhouse in February, its resounding success suggested the venue might as well hand over the keys to the two Tony winners responsible: star Jefferson Mays and director Darko Tresnjak. That is essentially what has happened, as this dynamic duo has returned with “The Visit” just seven months later. With much of the cast and crew carried over from the previous hit, the Playhouse currently operates almost as an official resident company.

However, is “The Visit” as enjoyable as “Amadeus”? It is certainly more polarizing, though no less lively. Based on Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s 1956 Swiss play, it is a vintage black comedy that leans heavily into absurdism. As the tragicomedy progresses, Tresnjak moves from initially realistic trappings to surrealist, grotesque, and anachronistic elements. Fundamentally, though, it is a theater of fatalism, steadily convincing the audience that society, government, and individuals are inevitably subject to corruption and venality. Your enjoyment will ultimately depend on how much you already accept or reject this bleak worldview.

Despite being widely regarded as one of the most charismatic actors in modern theater, Jefferson Mays is not the true star of “The Visit,” despite top billing and his role as the clear protagonist, Anton Schill. Anton is a humble shopkeeper in postwar—or perhaps 2020s—Europe whose past returns to haunt him. Mays plays him more like a mouse than a man, a stark turnaround from his scenery-chewing turn as Salieri in “Amadeus.” Mays admitted in a recent interview that he was unsure about the role, given the character’s passivity. Yet, it takes a skilled actor to successfully mute his own energy. There is pleasure in watching him initially embody kindness before he succumbs to an emblem of human depravity.

The obvious centrifugal force of “The Visit,” however, is the female lead, Claire Zachanassian, who may be the richest woman in the world and possesses an even greater surfeit of personality than wealth. Melinda Page Hamilton plays her to perfection. Though her stage appearances and recurring TV roles have not yet made her a household name, her presence is so commanding that she feels like a star from her first scene. She steps off the train into her downtrodden hometown like a cunning combination of Lauren Bacall, Madonna, and a demonically possessed Daisy Buchanan. Her intentions are initially cloaked, but her barbed banter is so entertaining that you half-wish she harbors no sinister motives, even though the empty casket brought by her musclebound handlers makes her violent intentions clear. You cannot take your eyes off Hamilton, even when the plot offers her increasingly schematic tasks in the second half.

Regarding the plot, a major revelation occurs less than halfway through the show. While it could be considered a twist, virtually every synopsis in the last 70 years has spoiled it in the opening sentence. Cutting to the chase, Claire has earmarked the casket for Anton, despite their shared history as lovers. After sharing sweet memories of their youthful romance, she announces at a town meeting that she will rescue the failing burg with a billion-dollar donation—currency unspecified—on one condition: they must deliver her a dead Anton. She represents pure vengeance, even as she speaks like a character from a 1930s screwball comedy.

Up until Claire delivers her ultimatum, “The Visit” is a rollicking good time. For most of the audience, it remains that way until the end, despite some somber, unplayed-for-laughs moments. The basic problem, if you are a spoilsport, is that once Claire makes her proposal, there is no doubt the town will comply. The play is just too self-pleased with its bleakest possible vision of civilized behavior, offering no real escape from their misery. The final two-thirds largely consist of nudging the audience about how easily respectable citizens will justify murder. While it rings true, it also rings awfully predictable—a quality that felt less transgressive in the late 1950s and 1960s.

There is a lack of suspense because the townspeople are instantly transformed by the next morning after an initial vote of “no way” to Claire’s offer. The program notes reference “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” which seems like an apt analogy, except that film would be far less riveting if the entire city turned into pod people instantly, followed by an hour of slowly deciding to accept one’s fate. To give some credit here, there is one scene in which a cleric openly debates with himself whether to go along with the greedy mob or not, but within a couple of minutes he’s come to terms with the creeping evil, too. It is realistic that a population would find a way to justify throwing away all of its collective principles to commit a horrific crime; it is just a little less realistic—or good for the purposes of a full-length drama—that this would all happen in a virtual instant.

There are other huge dramatic implausibilities if one looks closely. The opening scenes have the townspeople convinced that Anton is their ticket to riches due to his past romance with Claire, and he seems equally convinced. But once she reveals her vengeful backstory, her reasoning, while somewhat justified by modern feminist morality tales, feels unhinged. To say he wronged her is an understatement. Is Anton supposed to be mentally compromised, or is the harmless soul we first meet simply too naive to realize Claire has returned not for love, but for blood? It makes no sense, perhaps a fault of the condensation rather than the full three-and-a-half-hour version adapted by Tony Kushner.

Despite these issues, the production offers failsafe pleasures. Tresnjak, wardrobe designer Charlotte DeVaux Shields, and set designer Alexander Dodge have ingeniously made sneakers the embodiment of complicity and evil. The supporting cast sneaks onstage without revealing their footwear until a key moment, when their colorful shoes light up with a fluorescent glow, revealing they have succumbed to the “body snatchers.” (Even the town cleric shows his Air Jordans). There are moments where the show suddenly jumps into the present day; some work, like the jarring inclusion of disco bumper music early on, while others, such as the use of modern cameras and video screens to bring the action into the 2020s, feel justified by the end.

The show’s creepiest characters—no contest here—are a pair of aging, balding, blind eunuchs played by Jake Levy and Lauren Worsham who seem to be part of Claire’s entourage for no good reason, other than to figure into the tale of woe she eventually tells, which finally explains why they know their way around the town so well despite being sightless visitors. Their presence brings “The Visit” almost right up to the edge of horror, which is where thematically it kind of belongs, despite all the zingers, smirks, and guffaws. The play seems to want to flirt with the idea of Grand Guignol, even if it remains more firmly rooted in the land of Samuel Beckett.

But the swing being taken here is bold enough that there is no reason to want to take the Playhouse keys back from Tresnjak, if he has more offbeat revival aspirations where this one came from. And with lead performances like Mays’ and Hamilton’s, the production is worth the visit. If the initial impulse is that Mays doesn’t have as much to do here as is worthy of his talent, he is so firmly enmeshed in the character of a nebbish caught up in a sub-Kafkaesque nightmare, he makes you feel deeply for his fate, even if Maurice Valency’s adapted script kind of seems to want you to not feel so bad about it. And Melinda Page Hamilton? She is so captivating, in both her rages and her funnier, more casual cruelty, that you would follow her Claire to just about any soiree where the multi-billionaire elite meet, even if you did spot a coffin there with your name on it.

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