"The Visit" Review

I went to go see The Visit on Friday night, and was not expecting it to be that great. If I want to see a play, I'm more into comedies or musicals... old-time drama just isn't my thing. Unfortunately, I have to say reality was pretty much equivalent with my expections. Nothing against the actors or the scenery construction or anything, the plot was just nothing interesting to me.

It started out in a town called Güllen, which I have to say no one pronounced correctly, given that it's a German town. Umlauts are there for a reason; I wish they'd be ommitted if they're just going to be ignored. But anyway, the town is very poor and the people are expecting the return of one of their former residents, Clara, who they hope will donate money to rejuvinate the town. She does in fact promise them $1 billion, but at a costly exchange. The reason Clara returned to the town was to rectify the injustice against her that forced her to leave in the first place, so the play becomes about whether the townspeople will accept monetary riches for what would typically be seen as a great moral transgression. In the end, Clara gets what she wants, as it seems like she's accustomed to, but I wish the play included how the townspeople lived with themselves. I applaud the message of the story, I just think it's time to modernize it -- like how La Bohème is the basis of Rent.

The acting wasn't bad; as far as I could tell, no one messed up his lines too badly. My biggest question and consequential pet peeve after watching this play is "How on earth does screaming 'Ahhhh!' and charging a man kill him?" Honestly, not well thought out, in my opinion. With all the other sound effects that were played throughout, a gun shot couldn't have been managed? He could've at least been charged by a crowd with knives, but I don't buy that he died of fright.

I would also like to point out that I found the amount of typos in the program to be abyssmal. The main character's name, Clara, was not even misspelled as "Claire." The program definitely said "Clarie." I am a firm proponent of the belief that a large amount of one's credibility is determined by grammatical correctness, especially when it comes to names. Overall, I don't think it was worth the $5 that I really needed for other things this week. I would not have minded had it been free, but I really did need that money.