'Visit from an Unknown Woman' review — Stefan Zweig's novella becomes an erotically daring mating dance

Read our review of Visit from an Unknown Woman, adapted by Christopher Hampton, now in performances at the Hampstead Theatre to 27 July.

Christopher Hampton owes much of his career to an epistolary novel: the 18th-century French classic Les Liaisons Dangereuses, which brought him acclaim and awards onstage and screen. So it’s not surprising in this later phase of his career that he should return to a 1922 novella from Stefan Zweig, Letter from an Unknown Woman, that foregrounds the epistle once again.

The Austrian writer, little-known these days but once a major literary presence, leant this same title to a 1948 Marcel Ophuls film, starring Louis Jourdan and Joan Fontaine, that has staunch adherents of its own. And here it is, conceived afresh as a slim, trim theatre piece (contemporary dance included) running a scant 70 minutes, that feels like an appetiser for something weightier to come. The letter of the original title is now a visit, which sounds like a hefty upgrade of sorts.

And the result? On the one hand, the Hampstead is to be commended for rescuing a production that stumbled on opening night with the sudden departure of their lead actor, who was quickly and ably replaced by Jim Corrigan. A familiar name on London stages, Corrigan by all reports was off-book from his first performance in the role, and has committed to the task with real flair.

The heavy lifting of Chelsea Walker’s production, though, falls to Natalie Simpson, here cast as the deliberately mysterious, initially unnamed Marianne who seems to have rather randomly ensnared Corrigan’s Stefan at a club – her pick-up, you’ll note, has the same name as the source author in an adaptation that plays off Zweig’s own reputation as a playboy.

The gnomic woman would appear to have had some sort of history with Stefan years prior to finding him anew this particular night, and she is preceded onstage by a younger version of herself who amplifies the shadowy ambiguity that hovers over the entire, um, affair. Jessie Gattward takes the role of the seducer’s younger self, and her movements are choreographed by Michela Meazza, a longtime collaborator with Matthew Bourne who might well have located a meaty self-contained ballet in this very narrative.

As it is, we watch a mating dance of sorts that tends towards the theatrically arid, notwithstanding hints of historical ignition to help locate the material and ramp up its impact. The story has been moved forward in time to the 1930s and Stefan is here a Jew who keeps a manservant (Nigel Hastings) in his employ to run interference, carnal and otherwise, as needed.

But the resolution, when it comes after not very long, depends upon a chronological tricksiness, and you find yourself aching for more action in the here and now that might release Simpson from the taxing burden of coming to represent reminiscence. Her performance is a marvel of memorisation, and the actress deserves double credit for modulating her work to accommodate two leading men in quick succession.

There’s no faulting an ace design team that possesses its own starkly Continental chic: Rosanna Vize’s set and Bethany Gupwell’s lighting conjoin with Peter Rice’s sound design to keep audiences deliciously wrong-footed all the way through.

The finished product nonetheless retains the air of a rehearsal room experiment that hasn’t yet released its full potential. For all its erotic daring and dissimulation, Visit from an Unknown Woman exists, in emotional terms anyway, as vaporous at its alluring yet illusory core.

Visit from an Unknown Woman is at the Hampstead Theatre through 27 July. Book Visit from an Unknown Woman tickets on London Theatre.

Photo credit: Visit from an Unknown Woman (Photos by Marc Brenner)