Visit from an Unknown Woman
Stefan’s got a problem. He doesn’t remember the woman he slept with ten years earlier and now she’s basically his stalker. That’s the thrust of this strange, slight play by Christopher Hampton, adapted from the novella by Stefan Zweig. But despite its themes of obsession and mental illness, this is not ‘Baby Reindeer’. It’s far too arch, too stiff for that. The original novella takes the form of a letter written by a woman to a Viennese writer. She explains her obsession with him, how it’s played out for many years, and some of the dire consequences. Hampton, who first adapted this for the Theater in der Josefstadt in Vienna where it was very successful, has had to fiddle with the structure and the timeline. Yes he has form with epistolary works turned into plays – ‘Les Liaisons Dangereuses’ is his biggest hit – and he knows that someone reading out a letter on stage probably isn’t that interesting. But nor, especially, is this. First Stefan and the woman have a one night stand. She seems to know a lot about him. Then she comes back in some distress, and talks at him for ages. The unpeeling of the mystery keeps things interesting for a while, but the dialogue stays too stilted, like it’s translated from another language (which it sort of is) and Chelsea Walker’s production feels all cold and alienating, with a permeating bleakness that stops us from finding any heart, or any way of feeling for the characters. Rosanna Vize’s set looks cold and ghostly. The flat is grey, ful
