Now this is a real morality tale, originally in German this version has been transposed to post-War USA. A fabulously rich woman returns to the home town which she left as a pregnant and destitute teenager. The dead end town, all of its industry now closed down, is desperately hoping she will bestow some of her largess upon it, and the mayor prevails upon a shopkeeper, who had been her boyfriend nearly half a century ago, to greet her.
As the play proceeds it becomes clear that he had got her pregnant, then denied paternity and bribed a couple of lads to corroborate his story in front of the judge. The woman is grotesquely awful and bitter, and offers the town a billion dollars, but with one stipulation. The town must kill the shopkeeper/boyfriend. She had even bought a coffin to take his corpse back with her. The mayor obviously refuses, but as the play goes on, the temptation becomes too great for the upright citizens.
I suppose there are a couple of oddities with this play. The first is it is a tragi-comedy, but the comedy is grotesque. Claire is the most awful woman anyone could imagine. Bitter. She dismisses people in a ludicrously offhand manner - husbands being married and divorced in a matter of days. There are funny moments, mostly the comedy of the absurd, but overall this is unspeakably dark. The two perjuring lads for example are now part of her entourage as something of a comic duo - but she had had them blinded and castrated. So not so funny.
Also, being a morality tale it desperately labours its point, with the occasional long moralising speech about love, or the corruption of money. It doesn't so much tell a story as collect together lessons for us about the frailty of human decency. It is very long at 3 and a half hours with a truly vast cast (even if many don't have a speaking part). The sort of play that could only take place at a subsidised theatre.
The sort of play one is glad one saw, one will remember, but one can't really say one enjoyed.
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