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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2020
On 29 January 1956, a new play by up-and-coming Swiss dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt had its world premiere at the Zurich Schauspielhaus. From the stage of the venerable playhouse, the young playwright's “tragic comedy,” Der Besuch der alten Dame (lit.: The Visit of the Old Lady—a title I shall employ to distinguish it from a well-known but much-changed English adaptation), presented the story of billionairess Claire Zachanassian's return to her impoverished hometown after forty years. During those intervening decades, she used a string of strategic marriages to amass considerable financial assets, but lost a hand and a leg in various transportation accidents. The people of Güllen, a rundown town whose claim to fame is that Goethe once spent the night there, start off the play finalizing their plans for a strategic grand reception at the train station: they have high hopes of convincing their prodigal daughter to save them from poverty and return them to their former glory. That daughter, however, has justice—not salvation—on her mind for the cruel town that exiled her as an unwed, pregnant teenager. After secretly using her fortune to buy and close each of the town's factories, Claire has returned. At a banquet held in her honor, she offers the bankrupt town “one billion” in exchange for the communal murder of Alfred Ill, beloved citizen and father and heir apparent to the mayorship. He also happens to be the high-school sweetheart who perjured himself to betray Claire and the child they conceived all those years ago.
For access to materials, my thanks to the German Literature Archive (DLA Marbach), the Swiss Literary Archives, the Thuner Seespiele, and Tom Nelis and Charles Coes. Thank you to the University of Pennsylvania, Davidson College, and the DLA Marbach for their financial support, and to the Franklin Inn writers’ circle, many conference attendees, and the peer reviewers and editorship of Theatre Survey for their invaluable feedback on earlier drafts.
1 “Werkstatistik 2010/2011 ‘Wer spielte was?’ des Deutschen Bühnenvereins,” kultur-port.de, 14 August 2012, www.kultur-port.de/index.php/kunst-kultur-news/5348-werkstatistik-20102011-wer-spielte-was-des-deutschen-buehnenvereins.html, accessed 4 August 2019.
2 Weber, Ulrich et al. ., eds., Dramaturgien der Phantasie: Dürrenmatt intertextuell und intermedial (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2014), 7–8Google Scholar.
3 “Schauspielhaus Zürich: Dürrenmatt: Der Besuch der alten Dame,” Zürcher Spiegel, 1 February 1956, no. 31, FD-D-10-b AD-1, Schweizerisches Literaturarchiv (Swiss Literary Archives), Bern (hereinafter, SLA). Translations are my own unless otherwise noted.
4 Quoted in W. Wollenberger, “Der Besuch der alten Dame findet nicht statt: Zu einem Fehlentscheid der Stiftung pro Helvetia,” Die Weltwoche, 20 April 1956.
5 Loeffler, Michael Peter, Friedrich Dürrenmatts “Der Besuch der alten Dame” in New York: Ein Kapitel aus der Rezeptionsgeschichte der neueren Schweizer Dramatik (Basel: Birkhäuser, 1976), 10–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 John Beaufort, “Visit from Switzerland in Theater Named for Stars,” Christian Science Monitor, 17 May 1958, 12, ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
7 I use the term normative to refer to physicalities and sexualities that simultaneously create and reinforce mainstream norms in Western culture, e.g., temporary able-bodiedness, youthfulness (or at least the aspiration thereto), and heterosexuality.
8 The significant, unacknowledged changes to the original text did not go unnoticed, neither in the German- nor in the English-language press. The generally negative response focused on a perceived watering-down of Dürrenmatt's play and a reductive standardization of Claire's body and character. Loeffler, 43; Hans Sahl, “Dürrenmatt in New York,” 1958, FD-D-10-b AD-3, folder 6 (1958–71), SLA; Richard Plant, “Letter to the Editor,” New York Times, 18 May 1958, §2, 3; Maximilian Slater, “Letter to the Editor,” New York Times, 18 May 1958, §2, 3.
9 Loeffler, 10.
10 Program for Friedrich Dürrenmatts Der Besuch der alten Dame: Das Musical (Thun: Heimatland Verlag, 2012), 11, personal collection.
11 This “new” musical was actually anything but—in 1998, the German press reported that Kander and Ebb were planning a new musical based on Der Besuch der alten Dame and starring Angela Lansbury. Christina Gubler, “Der Tanz um die alte Dame: Theaterstück von Dürrenmatt wird Broadway-Musical,” Sonntags Zeitung, Zürich, 10 May 1998, 63. Several unfortunate twists of fate (Lansbury's husband's illness, withdrawal of an investor, 9/11), led to its repeated delay and Rivera's involvement. See Michael Riedel, “Backer Balks, Lansbury Walks—And Now . . . Visit a Close Call,” New York Post, 2 August 2000; Christopher Wallenberg, “A Tenacious Show Finds a New Stage: The Long Journey of The Visit,” New York Times, 17 July 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/07/20/theater/the-long-journey-of-the-visit.html?_r=0, accessed 22 April 2017.
12 Lewis, Victoria Ann, “Crip,” in Keywords for Disability Studies, ed. Adams, Rachel, Reiss, Benjamin, and Serlin, David (New York: New York University Press, 2015), 46–8Google Scholar.
13 Halberstam, Jack, In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (New York: New York University Press, 2005), 6Google Scholar.
14 Even the idea of a particular timeline being perceived as “natural” rather than normative points to the entanglement of queer time with crip time. See Kuppers, Petra, Disability and Contemporary Performance: Bodies on Edge (New York: Routledge, 2004), 49–50Google Scholar.
15 Edelman, Lee, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 3–5, 10–11Google Scholar.
16 Kafer, Alison, Feminist, Queer, Crip (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 29Google Scholar.
17 Puar, Jasbir K., Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 210–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quotes at 211.
18 Kafer, 34–5, 41–2; Price, Margaret, Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011), 62–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I borrow the term “sexual culture” from Tobin Siebers, whose discussion of sexuality, sexual rights, and sexual practices of people with disabilities is central to my thinking about the interaction between Halberstam's queer time and Kafer's crip time. Siebers, Tobin, Disability Theory (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Turner, George W. and Crane, Betsy, “Pleasure Is Paramount: Adults with Intellectual Disabilities Discuss Sensuality and Intimacy,” Sexualities 19.5–6 (2016): 677–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar, doi:10.1177/1363460715620573.
19 Kafer, 40–6.
20 Ibid., 44.
21 I am deliberately departing from the term “queer crip” for two reasons. First, I wish to foreground “crip” as McRuer does in his formulation of “crip theory.” McRuer, Robert, Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability (New York: New York University Press, 2006)Google Scholar. Second, I wish to make clear that the entwinement of Claire's disability and her sexuality is what determines this aspect of her identity, rather than that she identifies as a queer person who is also crip, or vice versa.
22 The difficulty of speaking about these concepts together has been the subject of critical attention, as their combination tends to result in “marginalization or marveling.” McRuer, Robert and Mollow, Anna, “Introduction,” in Sex and Disability, ed. McRuer, Robert and Mollow, Anna (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), 1–34Google Scholar, at 1.
23 Dürrenmatt, Friedrich, Der Besuch der alten Dame: Eine tragische Komödie (Zurich: Diogenes, 1998), 25–6Google Scholar. Translations from this text are mine unless otherwise noted. Hereafter, only parenthetical page references are given in the text.
24 They also reminisce about when Alfred fought off a railroader who chased after Claire, and she cleaned the blood from his face with her red underskirt (117).
25 Here I am thinking in particular of Lee Edelman's characterization of reproductive futurism and of politics’ ability to imagine a past characterized by the subject's wholeness and, simultaneously, project that ideal past as the desired future. Edelman, 10.
26 For more on how these prostheses signify disability via their material (one is ivory, one seems to be at least partly metal) and their historical context in postwar Germany, see Caroline Weist, “Performance Prosthetic: Figuring Heimat in Twentieth-Century German Theater” (Ph.D. diss., Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Pennsylvania, 2014), particularly 149–202.
27 Siebers, 150.
28 Ibid., 151.
29 These labels were common in the international culture that David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder have termed the “Eugenic Atlantic.” Mitchell, David and Snyder, Sharon, “The Eugenic Atlantic: Race, Disability, and the Making of an International Eugenic Science, 1800–1945,” Disability & Society 18.7 (2003): 843–64, at 844, doi:10.1080/0968759032000127281Google Scholar. See also Kühl, Stefan, For the Betterment of the Race: The Rise and Fall of the International Movement for Eugenics and Racial Hygiene, trans. Schofer, Lawrence (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
30 Bock, Gisela, “Racism and Sexism in Nazi Germany: Motherhood, Compulsory Sterilization, and the State,” Signs 8.3 (1983): 400–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 404.
31 The connection to eugenics is made even more explicit in A New Musical, where Claire's mother is said to be Romani and her father Jewish. Terrence McNally, Fred Ebb, and John Kander, “The Visit: Broadway Rehearsal Script” (24 February 2015), 22, personal collection.
32 Bock, 406.
33 Edelman, 11; Kafer, 29. See also Feely, Michael, “Sexual Surveillance and Control in a Community-Based Intellectual Disability Service,” Sexualities 19.5–6 (2016): 725–50, doi:10.1177/1363460715620575CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
34 While prognoses do share certain qualities with prophecies, and the text does repeatedly liken Claire to a Fury or a Fate, the unique circumstances of Claire's demand for Alfred's life mark it clearly as the former rather than the latter. A macabre physician, not an oracle, Claire is not reporting a divinely inspired vision of the future that may or may not involve her, but rather using empirical observations and individual expertise to predict a future course of events in which she will play an active role. For what it means to live in “prognosis time,” one of many forms of crip time, see Jain, Sarah Lochlann, “Living in Prognosis: Toward an Elegiac Politics,” Representations, 98.1 (2007): 77–92, doi:10.1525/rep.2007.98.1.77CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On “prognosis time” as a variant of “crip time,” see Kafer, 36.
35 The exact wording of this line is not set. Regarding the premiere, see “Schauspielhaus Zürich: Dürrenmatt: Der Besuch der alten Dame,” FD-D-10-b AD-1, SLA. Regarding the Berndeutsch version, see P. F.,“Dürrenmatts alte Dame berndeutsch am eindrücklichsten,” Tages-Nachrichten, 19 March 1973, FD-D-10-b AD-2, Pressedokumentation Der Besuch der alten Dame, Pressematerialien zu Aufführungen der Emmentaler Liebhaberbühne Spielzeit 1973/74, SLA.
36 Jain, 81.
37 Ibid., 80.
38 Ibid., 84–5. The alternative future for cancer sufferers is generally one of life, whereas Claire's is one of enduring death, yet they both redeem a past shown to be riddled with signs of disease.
39 Richard Christiansen, “Getting The Visit on Stage Was a Drama in Itself,” Chicago Tribune, 30 September 2001.
40 Franziska Streun, “Unsere alte Dame ist um die 50 Jahre alt und realitätsnah,” Thuner Tagblatt, 11 March 2013, www.bernerzeitung.ch/region/thun-und-berner-oberland/Unsere-alte-Dame-ist-um-die-50-Jahre-alt-und-realitaetsnah/story/30479105, accessed 28 December 2017.
41 Wolf, Stacy, A Problem Like Maria: Gender and Sexuality in the American Musical (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
42 Ibid., 31.
43 Scott McMillin argues that, far from being a unification of music and plot, the musical form is actually negotiating a complex temporality because it has two orders of time: progressive (plot) and repetitive (music). McMillin, , The Musical as Drama (Princeton: Princeton University Press, [2006] 2014), doi:10.1515/9781400865406Google Scholar. There are traces of this type of temporal conflict even in Dürrenmatt's nonmusical original, e.g., Claire's serial and short-lived marriages as opposed to both the progressive narrative envisioned by the Gülleners and the crip-queer one enacted by Claire. A thorough investigation of the role that music plays in the relative crip-queerness of musicals would be a welcome addition to the scholarship, but one I cannot undertake here.
44 Wolf, Stacy, Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 12Google Scholar.
45 Ibid., 13.
46 Palladini, Giulia, The Scene of Foreplay: Theater, Labor, and Leisure in 1960s New York (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2017), 17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
47 Deutscher Bühnenverein, “Aufteilung der gespielten Werke nach Genres,” tweet, 13 July 2018, twitter.com/Buehnenverein/status/1017705888239497216, accessed 4 August 2019.
48 Bühnenverein, Deutscher, Wer spielte was? Werkstatistik des Deutschen Bühnenvereins für die Spielzeit 2017/18 (Cologne: Deutscher Bühnenverein, 2019), 410–11Google Scholar.
49 This economic relationship is also beginning to work in both directions: Broadway-style musicals are now being given test runs in Germany and Austria with the possibility of being exported to Broadway. Two of note are Rocky the Musical and Stephen Schwartz's Schikaneder, the latter of which has a libretto by Das Musical's Christian Struppeck: Patrick Healy, “Yo, Adrian! I'm Singin’!,” New York Times, 5 December 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/theater/a-hit-in-germany-a-rocky-musical-aims-at-broadway.html, accessed 9 December 2017; Robert Viagas, “Stephen Schwartz's New Musical about Mozart's Librettist Sets Premiere,” Playbill, 9 May 2016, www.playbill.com/article/stephen-schwartz-39-s-new-musical-about-mozart-39-s-librettist-sets-premiere-com-348389, accessed 9 December 2017.
50 Palladini, 18.
51 The term “normate” was coined by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson to describe the subject position constructed in opposition to deviance. Its exact qualities are historically and culturally contingent and, despite the beliefs of those who would assume the imagined identity of the normate, cannot possibly apply in full to the majority of people who claim to be so. Garland[-]Thomson, Rosemarie, Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 8–9Google Scholar.
52 Because of the prevalence of Valency's “translation” of Dürrenmatt's original play, A New Musical uses the name Anton Schell instead of Alfred Ill. To avoid confusion, I use “Alfred” to refer to the character of Claire's former lover in all shows.
53 On the persistent correlation of maternity and (national) community, see Greenfield, Susan C., “Introduction,” in Inventing Maternity: Politics, Science, and Literature, 1650–1865, ed. C., Susan Greenfield and Carol Barash (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999), 1–33Google Scholar; Allen, Ann Taylor, Feminism and Motherhood in Germany, 1800–1914 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Halberstam, esp. “time of inheritance,” 5; and Kukla, Rebecca, Mass Hysteria: Medicine, Culture, and Mothers’ Bodies (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005)Google Scholar.
54 Dunworth, Felicity, Mothers and Meaning on the Early Modern English Stage (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), 112CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McGirr, Elaine M. and Engel, Laura, “Introduction,” in Stage Mothers: Women, Work, and the Theater, 1660–1830, ed. Engel, Laura and McGirr, Elaine M. (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, and Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), 1–16Google Scholar, at 7.
55 On Western culture's long history of viewing the bodies of pregnant women and new mothers as unstable and potentially dangerous, see Longhurst, Robyn, Maternities: Gender, Bodies and Space (New York: Routledge, 2008), 4Google Scholar. For their connection to pollution and biblical law, see Harris, Jonathan Gil, “This Is Not a Pipe: Water Supply, Incontinent Sources, and the Leaky Body Politic,” in Enclosure Acts: Sexuality, Property, and Culture in Early Modern England, ed. Burt, Richard and Archer, John Michael (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 203–28Google Scholar, esp. 212–15.
56 Kukla, 105.
57 These strategies include dialogue that discusses the child solely in simple past tense (used generally only in writing and for historical events), stage directions for Claire to speak softly when discussing the child, limited mentions of the child versus of Claire as a teenager, and Claire referring to her daughter as “the thing” and “our girl” rather than “our daughter” (49, 115–16).
58 The Teacher describes her as “this arch-whore, who swaps out her men in front of our eyes, shamelessly, and who is collecting our souls” (102) and says that destiny has “ominously blossomed” and “swelled up like a toad” (99).
59 Christian Struppeck and Wolfgang Hofer, “Der Besuch der Alten Dame—Das Musical: Rehearsal Script” (11 July 2013), 36, Thunerseespiele.
60 The publishing house was founded by Andreas Stucki, the “Father of the Seespiele,” with the aim of turning local stories into high-quality musicals so that the genre was no longer “typically American” or “typically English.” M. T., “Der Vater der Seespiele ist tot,” Bieler Tagblatt, March 28, 2012, www.bielertagblatt.ch/nachrichten/kultur/der-vater-der-seespiele-ist-tot, accessed 9 October 2019.
61 Streun, “Unsere alte Dame”; “Über uns,” Thunerseespiele, 2015, www.thunerseespiele.ch/uber-uns/thunerseespiele/, accessed 5 December 2017; Franziska Streun, “Alte Dame braucht Reserven der Seespiele,” Thuner Tagblatt, 5 September 2013, www.langenthalertagblatt.ch/region/thun-und-berner-oberland/alte-dame-braucht-reserven-der-seespiele/story/27760226, accessed 5 December 2017.
62 McNally, Ebb, and Kander, “Broadway Rehearsal Script,” 1.
63 Wolf, Changed for Good, 18, 58.
64 It was nominated in five categories: Best Musical, Book of a Musical, Leading Actress in a Musical, Original Score, and Lighting Design of a Musical. Evidence suggests awards directly affect nominees: shows that win enjoy a boost that accrues over time, whereas shows that lose experience a penalty that gradually increases. Boyle, Melissa and Chiou, Lesley, “Broadway Productions and the Value of a Tony Award,” Journal of Cultural Economics 33.1 (2009): 49–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 62.
65 Percentage based on 93 total shows in a 901-seat theatre with 53,750 tickets sold. “Production Grosses: The Visit,” Playbill.com, www.playbill.com/production/gross?production=00000150-aea8-d936-a7fd-eefc72ea0005, accessed 22 April 2017. The play announced its closing the day after the Tony Awards in June 2015. Adam Hetrick, “With No Tony Wins, Kander and Ebb Musical The Visit, Starring Chita Rivera, Posts Closing Notice,” Playbill, 8 June 2015, www.playbill.com/article/with-no-tony-wins-kander-and-ebb-musical-the-visit-starring-chita-rivera-posts-closing-notice-com-350833, accessed 22 April 2017.
66 Streun, “Reserven der Seespiele”; “Besuch der alten Dame: Nur ein Viertel sind Vollpreistickets,” Salzburger Nachrichten, www.salzburg.com/nachrichten/oesterreich/kultur/sn/artikel/besuch-der-alten-dame-nur-ein-viertel-sind-vollpreistickets-181260/, accessed 22 April 2017.
67 “Der Besuch der alten Dame,August 2015 in Japan,” www.musicalinsider.io, 16 December 2014, www.musicalinsider.io/2014/12/16/der-besuch-der-alten-dame-august-2015-in-japan/, accessed 17 March 2019. On the additional run: “Der Besuch der alten Dame in Japan/Tokio: Wiederaufnahme im Theatre Creation,” www.musicalvienna.at, 14 November 2016, www.musicalvienna.at/de/aktuelles/241/DER-BESUCH-DER-ALTEN-DAME-in-Japan, accessed 17 March 2019.
68 “Der Besuch der alten Dame erstmals in Deutschland,” musicalvienna.at, 10 May 2019, www.musicalvienna.at/de/aktuelles/659/Der-Besuch-der-alten-Dame-erstmals-in-Deutschland, accessed 5 August 2019; for the cancellation, www.freilichtspiele-tecklenburg.de/de/infos-ticket-rueckgabe2020/, accessed 22 June 2020. South America: Werner Rosenberger, “Man weiß nie, was funktioniert,” Wiener Kurier, 19 February 2014, https://kurier.at/kultur/christian-struppeck-man-weiss-nie-was-funktioniert/51.991.552, accessed 15 August 2019.
69 Program (Playbill) for The Visit: A New Musical at the Lyceum Theatre, New York, 2015.
70 See, for example: David Rooney, “Chita Rivera Set to Pay Broadway The Visit,” Hollywood Reporter, 8 January 2015, www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/chita-rivera-set-pay-broadway-761988, accessed 17 December 2019.
71 Program for Das Musical, 22.
72 Snyder, Sharon, Brueggemann, Brenda Jo, and Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie, “Introduction: Integrating Disability into Teaching and Scholarship,” in Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2002), 1–12Google Scholar, at 2.
73 Ibid.
74 “Über uns.”
75 Michael Paulson, “Broadway Sets Box-Office Record, Powered by Hamilton and Springsteen,” New York Times, 30 May 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/theater/broadway-sets-box-office-record.html, accessed 24 March 2019.
76 Ibid.
77 McClary, Susan, Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality, new ed. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 16Google Scholar; Wolf, Changed for Good, 8–9.