‘The Visit’ at Pasadena Playhouse Review: The ’50s Absurdist Comedy Is Too Smug in Its Peak-Bleak View of Venal Humanity, but Jefferson Mays and Melinda Page Hamilton Are Worth the Visit
Pasadena Playhouse’s follow-up to its successful “Amadeus” reunites actor Jefferson Mays and director Darko Tresnjak for Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s dark 1956 tragicomedy “The Visit”. The production is energetic and theatrically inventive, but more divisive than “Amadeus” because its bleak, fatalistic view of corruption and human greed can feel overly knowing.
Mays plays Anton Schill, a modest shopkeeper whose past returns to haunt him, deliberately suppressing his usual flamboyance as the character becomes an emblem of moral decline. Melinda Page Hamilton dominates as Claire Zachanassian, an immensely wealthy woman whose charismatic return to her impoverished hometown carries sinister intentions, signalled by the arrival of her powerful entourage and an empty coffin.
- Pasadena Playhouse reunites the “Amadeus” team for a darker, more divisive play.
- Jefferson Mays gives a restrained performance as a man facing moral collapse.
- Melinda Page Hamilton is magnetic as the wealthy, sinister Claire.