Over-egging the pudding?
The first play this week is Visit from an unknown Woman; at the Hampstead.
Set (the play’s ‘now’) in just pre-Anschluss Vienna (although you couldn’t have told that from the ‘realistic’ set and costumes – rather more a ‘now’ ‘now’) it is mainly a two hander, with an excellent cameo by Nigel Hastings as a somewhat unexpected Gentleman’s Gentleman – but staring mainly James Corrigan and Natalie Simpson.
Written by Christopher Hampton (normally a safe pair of hands) from a short story by Stefan Zweig; Hampton, rather naughtily, takes the fictional novella by Zweig and reinterprets it to be autobiographical – then fractures the novella’s time line and updates it. The dénouement in the novella is actually placed in 1918 but is time-shifted to the late ‘30s.
The acting is strong, although the ‘unknown woman’ is at times slightly less than believable, a problem I think with the script, not the interpretation. And the male protagonist, now a Jewish author fearing for the future is made more sympathetic than his scripted actions would otherwise allow.
A fourth (wordless) character lurks throughout the play (Natalie Simpson’s character’s younger self) and emerges at the end as an accomplished dancer (Jessie Gattward) summarising the play in interpretive dance, both unexpected and perhaps surplus to requirements.
It’s a good play, but overcomplex perhaps for quite a simple story. Interestingly the male character says he writes better books than plays, and it might be arguable that that holds true for this play compared with its founder book. And by updating the work to the late 30's Hampton can add-in a lot of 'fear of the Nazis' material which the original never had, giving the male character hardly-hidden angst which Zweig never anticipated.. But it’s still absolutely worth a visit. 