Review: Corrupted morals and greed make Pasadena Playhouses vivid update of 'The Visit' feel like today

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Set us as preferred Writing in the wake of World War II, Swiss playwright Friedrich Dürrenmatt returned again and again to the subject of guilt.He was haunted by Switzerland’s position of neutrality during the fight against the Nazis, and he was troubled by the accommodations his prosperous countrymen were willing to make after the war to maintain their comfortable detachment.These concerns are crystallized in his 1956 play “The Visit,” a work that has some of the hallmarks of the absurdist comedies of the period but just as many differences.

Dürrenmatt is more focused on moral than metaphysical questions.Wedekind and Kafka would seem to be bigger influences than Beckett and Ionesco.In placing the problems of his age on the stage, Dürrenmatt combined tragedy and grotesque comedy, poignant drama and political farce.

His mid-20th century style reflects both the European zeitgeist and his own exuberantly analytic big-picture sensibility.He loved crime stories in which the culprit was the slippery masses.

Revivals of “The Visit” are few and far between in my theatergoing experience.The play was turned into a musical by playwright Terrence McNally and the legendary Broadway songwriting duo of John Kander and Fred Ebb, and you’re more likely to see that version these days than the dramatic source that inspired it.

To give Dürrenmatt his due, Pasadena Playhouse has reassembled key components of the team that made “Amadeus” one of the best productions of the first half of 2026.Director Darko Tresnjak and lead actor Jefferson Mays deliver a revival of “The Visit,” in an English-language adaptation by Maurice Valency, that filled me with gratitude — gratitude for the high-level production, gratitude for making the case for why the play still matters, and gratitude for the opportunity of allowing us to make...