Pasadena Playhouse is getting much of the band back together. Following February/March’s Amadeus, which became one of the highest-grossing productions in the theater’s 100-plus-year history, Tony Award-winning director Darko Tresnjak and Tony winner Jefferson Mays have reunited for Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The Visit, running September 9th through October 4th.
And theirs is hardly the only reunion. Fellow Amadeus cast members John Lavelle, Jennifer Chang, Matthew Patrick Davis, Lauren Worsham, Matthew Henerson, and Hilary Ward return, while scenic designer Alexander Dodge and projection designer Aaron Rhyne are among those carrying the collaboration behind the curtain into a very different theatrical world.
If Amadeus examined envy and the price of greatness, The Visit turns its attention toward an equally combustible commodity: money. Dürrenmatt’s 1956 dark comedy, presented in Maurice Valency’s adaptation, centers on Claire Zachanassian, the world’s wealthiest woman, who returns decades later to the financially devastated town where she grew up. She has the means to rescue the community — and is prepared to do exactly that with a whopping one billion dollars. However, the magnanimous offer comes with a chilling condition involving former lover Anton Schill and a past that refuses to stay buried. What follows puts an entire town’s principles under pressure, asking how firmly morality holds when life-changing prosperity suddenly comes within reach.
Mays, who gave the Playhouse’s Amadeus its formidable Salieri in one of the greatest performances ever seen on a Southern California stage, takes on Anton, while Melinda Page Hamilton steps into the production’s other towering role as Claire. Known for Mad Men, Desperate Housewives, and The Peripheral, as well as a recent turn in South Coast Repertory’s God of Carnage, Hamilton portrays a woman who is fabulously wealthy, commanding, darkly funny and seemingly several chess moves ahead of everyone around her. Claire is a fascinating figure, returning home with enough power to alter the fortunes — and expose the character — of virtually everyone around her. Whether she has come back for revenge, justice, or something considerably harder to define hangs provocatively over Dürrenmatt’s unnerving satire.
Ahead of The Visit, LAexcites spoke with Hamilton about looking beyond Claire’s staggering proposition, finding the humor amid the play’s disturbing implications, developing Claire and Anton’s complicated history with Mays, entering a company with deep Amadeus ties, and why Dürrenmatt’s questions about money, morality and human nature remain uncomfortably timely.
Your character Claire arrives with immense wealth and is seemingly in complete control. What interested you most about the woman underneath all that power?
Hamilton: This story works on so many different levels — on an allegorical level, a mythos level, as a fairy tale, with even a Jungian logic to it. But underneath this is a woman who was broken and devastated by the actions of men and has come back as the top dog. What’s so interesting about this role at this time is the abuse of women writ large in our culture, and the lack of total accountability we see writ large. With [Claire], we see her coming back to enforce this accountability by using the tools of oppression. It allows her to demand accountability and also be consequence-free. There’s another aspect here that touches on our culture — that with great wealth comes a complete lack of accountability.
We arrive at the truth of this young girl within Claire and where she started, which shows up in certain places in the play. It’s been such a fascinating journey with this character — it’s the most complex character I’ve taken on.
The Visit is shockingly funny despite the darkness of Claire’s proposition. How do you find her humor without diminishing what’s at stake?
Hamilton: I think what’s wonderful is that she cuts through all the bullshit. What’s so fascinating about this play, at the level of the spoken word, is that the language can feel archaic, but Claire comes in with a contemporary voice that cuts through the bullshit. This is humorous, acerbic and clear-eyed. What’s endearing is that she owns herself; she knows who she is, with no shame about where she has come from or what she is now. It’s very bracing and entertaining.
Ultimately, her overarching need is for closure — an end to an open wound that has been festering for years.
Claire calls what she’s seeking “justice.” Do you think she truly believes that, or does she recognize it as revenge?
Hamilton: At this time, having finished our first week of rehearsal, I think for her they’re one and the same. This play functions on a Greek level — it’s justice, but it’s also about holding up a mirror to the culture that allowed this injustice to happen in the first place. It’s not just about Anton, either, but about showing the town who they are. In some ways [Anton] is the sacrificial lamb, but the real consequence is what happens to the town and what they’re left with. Whether that’s good or bad is for the town to decide.
At the end of the day, [Claire and Anton] are merely catalysts for a culture that is in transition, which you can call evolution or devolution — again, that’s up to the individual observer. Anton and Claire are ruled by forces set in motion that are bigger than they are. And Claire is aware that when she sets this in motion, there’s no going back. As an actor, that’s the internal tension I love — can she stop this from unfolding? But it soon dawns on her that [Claire] cannot, for all the power she has.
Claire seems remarkably certain the townspeople will eventually come around to her offer. What does that certainty reveal about how she sees human nature?
Hamilton: I think she sees that what will unfold is inevitable, and she knows herself to be an unstoppable force — it’s both exhilarating and terrifying. I think the obstacle to this, even though she knows it will happen, is the cost, particularly the cost to her. She may not reveal it, but she knows it, and she’s acting out something that is almost subterranean — primal, dark and shared. She just knows that she has access to it, that everyone has access to it, and that it ultimately rules the actions of everyone involved.
[Claire] experienced a lot of humiliation and abuse. There are allusions in the play to how she married into her wealth and what that required her to break inside herself.
Claire and Anton share a history that gradually changes how we understand both characters. What have you and Jefferson Mays discovered about that relationship together?
Hamilton: I think what we’ve discovered is that there was a lot of love there. You can’t have that level of hatred without so much love preceding it. The opposite of love is indifference, not hatred — and there was always something unsettling about the passion they had for each other, with the seeds of its demise having been sown from the beginning. It has the feel of a fairy tale or myth. You don’t build a revenge project around someone you didn’t care about deeply.
Darko Tresnjak and several members of this company previously worked together on the Playhouse’s Amadeus. What’s it been like entering that established creative chemistry while helping build something entirely different?
Hamilton: It’s wonderful — he’s built an ensemble company. There’s so much camaraderie, goodwill and warmth, with everyone being kind and accepting. I’ve worked with not just Darko, but John [Lavelle], Adrian [LaTourelle] and so many of the other people as well. I love that Darko returns to actors he’s worked with. He knows the paint he works with, the colors, and how to flesh out a cast and an ensemble.
There’s an affection that carries over from [cast members who worked on Amadeus], but there’s also this shared feeling of, ‘Here we are again.’
As you’ve gotten the play on its feet, has anything about Claire — or The Visit itself — changed from how you understood it when you first read the script?
Hamilton: Oh, yes. When I first read it, I read a different translation than the one we’re doing. Some of the language felt stilted and allegorical, and I couldn’t quite understand what the play was saying. But as you’re embodying it, it feels more three-dimensional, dynamic and suspenseful. If we pull it off, it will be quite a thrill, and people won’t know what comes next. It has a suspenseful and exciting quality.
I find some of these lines difficult to embody, and it’s been a challenge to get the rhythm of the language and understand what is going on. It’s very layered, with lots of subtext. Yesterday, I started writing out lines — I thought I’d slow down and get them to click a little better.
You show up at rehearsal to find what happens, and the script and moments in this play surprise me. I didn’t expect that — the emotional hits and resonances that come out of left field — and that’s the most thrilling thing as an actor.
Without giving away where the play ultimately goes, what do you hope audiences are still debating after they leave the theater?
Hamilton: I don’t know if I want them to debate so much as wonder why it resonates with them. My hope is that it stays with them, and that people wake up several days later and wonder why they feel unsettled — why they feel grief or anger and can’t shake the feeling from the play.
I think this is also a play about the advent of modernism. Has all this evolution and technology and everything that comes with it really served us as humanity, or is it a harbinger of doom? That’s a present question many are existentially debating.
Weirdly, this play, written in 1956, speaks to all of this. It speaks to the existential dread of an increasingly technological world, an increasingly economically divided world, and a world in which oppression and violence go unredressed. That hasn’t changed; in fact, it’s more in our face than before.
Cover image caption: Left to right are Jefferson Mays as Anton Schill and Melinda Page Hamilton as Claire Zachanassian in Pasadena Playhouse’s production of The Visit. Photo courtesy of Pasadena Playhouse/Jeff Lorch.
Pasadena Playhouse’s production of The Visit runs from Wednesday, September 9th through Sunday, October 4th. For further information and to purchase tickets, visit pasadenaplayhouse.org.
