“I'll wait”: Crip-Queer Temporality and Reproductive Futurism in Musical Adaptations of Dürrenmatt's Der Besuch der alten Dame (The Visit of the Old Lady)

Abstract: On 29 January 1956, a new play by up-and-coming Swiss dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt had its world premiere at the Zurich Schauspielhaus. From the stage of the venerable playhouse, the young playwright's “tragic comedy,” Der Besuch der alten Dame (lit.: The Visit of the Old Lady—a title I shall employ to distinguish it from a well-known but much-changed English adaptation), presented the story of billionairess Claire Zachanassian's return to her impoverished hometown after forty years. During those intervening decades, she used a string of strategic marriages to amass considerable financial assets, but lost a hand and a leg in various transportation accidents. The people of Güllen, a rundown town whose claim to fame is that Goethe once spent the night there, start off the play finalizing their plans for a strategic grand reception at the train station: they have high hopes of convincing their prodigal daughter to save them from poverty and return them to their former glory. That daughter, however, has justice—not salvation—on her mind for the cruel town that exiled her as an unwed, pregnant teenager. After secretly using her fortune to buy and close each of the town's factories, Claire has returned. At a banquet held in her honor, she offers the bankrupt town “one billion” in exchange for the communal murder of Alfred Ill, beloved citizen and father and heir apparent to the mayorship. He also happens to be the high-school sweetheart who perjured himself to betray Claire and the child they conceived all those years ago.