The Visit – Lyceum Theatre, New York

Chita Rivera and cast in The Visit at the Lyceum Theatre, New York. Picture: Thom Kaine

The Visit continues at the Lyceum Theatre, New York.

Star rating: 5 stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Standing downstage center in The Visit, the long-brewing Kander and Ebb musical that has finally reached Broadway, Chita Rivera playing Claire Zachanassian, the richest woman in the world, declares: “I’m unkillable.”

The applause that greets this declaration is, of course, not for the character Zachanassian, but for Rivera herself, who at age 82 is giving a wondrous performance adding to and perhaps capping (but who really knows?) an illustrious Broadway career.

That affirming applause could also well be for the team of composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb, who some ten years after Ebb’s death, are bringing to Broadway still another fresh and distinctive score. It’s their third musical to premiere since Ebb’s passing, and it’s a macabre beauty. As in such shows as Cabaret, Chicago and The Scottsboro Boys, it demonstrates their uncanny ability to turn bleak themes into gripping and often exhilarating musical theatre.

The Visit, with a book by noted playwright Terrence McNally and masterfully directed by John Doyle, is based on the 1956 black fable of human greed by Swiss playwright Friedrich Durrenmatt.

Claire Zachanassian returns to the town of Brachen, where as a young woman she was betrayed by her lover Anton. After she became pregnant, Anton bribed fellow townsmen to falsely testify in court that they had sex with her as well, thus blunting the question of paternity.

Now decades later after being cast out from the town, Claire, a woman who as she tells us “married very often” and “widowed very well”, makes a proposition to the townspeople, who, after their initial protests, find it hard to refuse. She offers the town, which has fallen into deep disrepair, ten billion marks for Anton’s life.

Rivera’s Claire, sheathed in glistening white against the drab   worn-out clothes of the townsfolk (Ann Hould-Ward designed the telling costumes), is a formidable creature, in turn frightening, vulnerable, playful and wise. Well-practiced and yet inherent star power radiates from her when she commands the stage in her big solo numbers, such as ‘I Walk Away’, in which she describes with humorous candour her series of husbands and their deaths. Her voice, given to wobbling in extended notes, is nevertheless strong and expressive, bringing full value to both melody and lyrics.

Roger Rees as the deceitful Anton, manages to win at least a modicum of sympathy for the man, now an old and failing shopkeeper. And we can feel the ardour he once had, as he recalls in song the blooming of his youthful love affair with Claire. The testosterone perceptibly rises as he goes through the song ‘I Must Have Been Something’. Rees’ singing has its uncertainties, but they’re all in one with a fine ‘character’ performance.

Doyle, exercising one of his notable skills as a director, has melded the townspeople into an organic and responsive ensemble. Within that ensemble, there are notable contributions by Mary Beth Peil as Anton’s despairing wife, David Garrison as the officious mayor and Jason Danieley as the conscious-stricken and loquacious school master.

The play’s weirdness is revved up by Claire‘s retinue: her butler who stands protectively at her side (Tom Nelis) and two blind eunuchs (Matthew Deming and Chris Newcomer), with faces covered in mask-like clown white, who vocalise about their devotion to Claire in remarkable castrati voices. When all three of them join Claire to strut and sing ‘I Would Never Leave You’, it becomes one of those grand vaudeville-like numbers that are a Kander and Ebb signature.

In fact, I would rank the score as one of their best. There are two particularly lovely romantic ballads, the soaring ‘You, You, You’, and the sinuous ‘Love and Love Alone’. The latter, with its accordion-infused orchestration, redolent of a smoky cafe, could well have attracted Marlene Dietrich.

However, Rivera does it full justice. There also a host of those numbers that set catchy melodies against measured or syncopated tempos to prompt immediate toe-tapping. When the townspeople all sing about the new shoes they have bought on credit with the prospect of Claire’s money, it‘s suddenly snappy musical comedy time, made even brighter by its dark, dark surroundings. Ebb’s genuine wit emphasised by Kander’s tempos make for a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Scott Pask’s unit set, marked by a foreboding passageway strangled in leafless vines, is appropriately threatening, especially in Japhy Weideman’s spooky lighting. It also gives director Doyle plenty of space to set his actors into fluid and imaginative groupings, as this tale of persistent love, greed and revenge   wields its way through a concise intermission-less 100 minutes. The show vibrates with a brilliantly instinctive sense of dark theatricality to illuminate the strange turns of the human soul.

One questionable device is the almost-always present figures of the Young Claire and Young Anton (Michelle Veintimilla and John Riddle), weaving in and out of the proceedings. But it pays off in the movement duet when Rivera’s Claire joins her younger self in a semi-dance of remembrance, affection and regret. The movement by choreographer Graciela Daniele is spare but elegant. Each lifting of arm or kick of leg is another laurel for Rivera’s triumphant performance.

                   Ron Cohen

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