The English Theatre Frankfurt "is back" and opens an exciting season fittingly with a psychological thriller. In her stage play "Switzerland" Joanna Murray-Smith lets bestselling author Patricia Highsmith meet her favourite murderous character Mr. Ripley. This is not only very exciting, but also extremely entertaining! Here's what the play is about:
Aging writer Patricia Highsmith, the grande dame of crime fiction, lives surrounded by books and a somewhat outlandish collection of knives and guns in seclusion in the Swiss Alps. An elegant young employee of her New York publishing house disturbs her solitude. He tries to persuade the gorgeous writer to write one last installment in her hit series about the mysteriously manipulative Mr. Ripley. It turns out, however, that her visitor wants far more than that. A murderous cat-and-mouse game begins. Her love of fictional murders mingles with reality. Who will survive the Swiss mountain air?
Ununderstood crime legend
According to legend, herself a difficult character full of resentment and racism, Patricia Highsmith creates unlikable antiheroes with her characters. Tom Ripley is Highsmith's most famous character, bearing a not entirely dissimilarity to herself. Like the author herself, having gone through an unhappy childhood, Ripley grows up strongly influenced by feelings of envy and resentment, into a sophisticated phony. Highsmith deftly and subtly manages to generate sympathy for the radical and immoral character of Ripley in the Ripley series, "The Talented Mr. Ripley" (1955), "Ripley Under Ground" (1970), "Ripley's Game" (1974), "The Boy Who Followed Ripley" (1980), and "Ripley Under Water" (1991).
Director Tom Littler, known to Frankfurtians for productions such as "Cabaret" (2018), "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (2016) and Tennessee Williams' "The Glas Menagerie" (2015), has been a Patricia Highsmith fan since "Strangers on a Train" - his first production at English Theatre Frankfurt. Absolutely underrated, he finds her simple-sounding but absolutely precise language, her multi-layered characters and the clever way of telling a story in such a way that you can always follow it completely and yet be surprised by its development.
Performances: Tuesday through Saturday at 7:30 p.m., Sunday at 6.00
Prices/full pay: between 27 and 39 euros
Discounts: between 13 and 18 euros
