Customer Reviews (1)

Sheer Delight with Dance of Death!
"The Meteor" is not one of Dürrenmatt's top books, but it definitely is a milestone in Dürrenmatt corpus.The play shows the Friedrich Dürrenmatt of late 40s - 50s moving into a much compositelyintegrated theatre theory and performance aspects. Something he repeatedlyspoke of in his PROBLEMS OF THE THEATER.

The play deals with the BiblicalLazarus state of mind - that of non-dying.The protagonist WolfgangSchwitter is in many ways biographical of Dürrenmatt himself as much asFriedrich Korbes of INCIDENT AT TWILIGHT was.A nobel prize winner (whichthe author never was, but was fashionable of talking about), acontroversial writer, an artist who started his life as a painter and foundto his horror that he could only draw caricatures and turned toplaywriting, Schwitter much like Dürrenmatt later became a fiction writer.The play deals with his wish to die but inability to die. The play is anabsolute theatre craftsman's delight. The possibilities that open out forany techie who wants to experiment with lights, sets, props - are enormous.Also a challenge.

The play begins with Schwitter entering the atelier ofNyffenschwander, an impoverished artist who is painting nudes of his wifeto eke out living, and is occupying currently the studio that Schwitteroccupied when he himself had no money.The couple are surprised. Schwitteris supposedly dead. The papers are full of it. The television and radio arestreaming the news. But Schwitter is alive. The rest of the play is a riot. Dürrenmatt's mastery of the absurd, the grotesque and love for the comedyof confrontation and dance of death is at its crescendo. While everycharacter that comes into contact with Schwitter die or is killed or runinto misfortune (including his own son who wants Schwitter to die in orderto inherit the legacy), Schwitter rants and desperately does a Lear inself-pity, wanting to die. But death would not come to him. In the courseof the play, Dürrenmatt does not spare a single institution - Real estateagents, medical estate, Mafia, Politicians, Journalists, Literary critics,Church, Salvation Army, Artists and not the least - the civilisation's mostancient institution - prostitution.

It is ironic and perhaps the cappingpoint in the work that Dürrenmatt subtly answers the charges of thefeminists and women critics who had taken cudgels against him for histreatment or the mis-treatment of female characters in his works, by havingSchwitter lambast and launch in to a tirade against the monstrosity of theworld, and how he himself could empathise with the Madame Frau Nomsen.Alas, to realise that while he was talking, Nomsen is dead. And theSalvation army enters.... I leave the rest to you.

Whoever tries todissuade you from reading this work - do not pay attention. Read foryourselves and then decide.I guess, for theatre artists - actors,lighting designers, set designers, directors - this is definitely achallenging work of art. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The Meteor
This is the first American publication of a new play by the famed Swiss dramatist whose The Visit has become a modern classic wherever theater is performed....

As the curtain rises, Nobel Prize-winning author Wolfgang Schwitter has been certified dead. All the ceremonial machinery to attend his state funeral has been set in motion. But the corpse, ignoring the official evidence, escapes from the clinic in his pajamas and returns to his old studio to die. The artist - "the meteor" - is more alive than the others and it is a long wait for the end. And so danse macabre unfolds, in which a bizarre assortment of archetypal characters are sacrificed at Schwitter's deathbed.
--- excerpts from book's dustjacket ... Read more