Visit From An Unknown Woman, adapted by Christopher Hampton from a short story by Stefan Zweig, opens like an episode of Seinfeld. A playboy writer enjoys a fling with a black-clad beauty – but when he kisses her goodbye, he can’t remember her name. It feels like a set-up for a gag, but the script is very short of jokes.
A year passes and the mysterious beauty, named Marianne, returns to the playboy’s pad and delivers a series of astonishing revelations. At this point, the show turns into a memory play as Marianne starts to yammer about her childhood, her family struggles and a mass of other details which sound like an over-emotional shopping list.
Not everyone found this show vapid and pretentious. The sell-out crowd cheered it to the rafters
Some of her tales are obviously manipulative. She talks of a secret pregnancy and a marriage proposal from a nobleman who owns a castle in Austria.
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