Dürrenmatt, Friedrich

Dürrenmatt, Friedrich (1921–90), Swiss dramatist, whose work, though influenced by Brecht, Wedekind, and Expressionism, has an unmistakable flavour of its own, with its mixture of the grotesque and the macabre and its clever use of modern dramatic techniques. His first success came with a mock-heroic comedy Romulus der Grosse (1949), set on the Ides of March 476, when the Emperor calmly receives the news of the barbarians' final victory. Die Ehe des Herrn Mississippi (1952), seen briefly in London in 1959 as The Marriage of Mr Mississippi, and Ein Engel kommt nach Babylon (1953) made little impact outside the German-speaking countries, but he won international fame with Der Besuch der alten Dame (1956), which as The Visit was seen widely in America in 1958 and England in 1960 in a production by Peter Brook with the Lunts. The story concerns a fabulously wealthy woman who bribes the citizens of her impoverished native town to kill her former seducer. After Frank V, an unsuccessful musical play, Dürrenmatt achieved another world-wide success with Die Physiker (1962), staged in London (by the RSC) in 1963 and a year later in New York as The Physicists, both productions again directed by Peter Brook. The scene is a lunatic asylum in which a nuclear physicist has taken refuge after burning his papers to prevent his researches being used for destructive purposes. Dürrenmatt's later plays have been less successful. Porträt eines Planeten (1971) presents a synopsis of man's life on earth from its beginnings to its destruction by a cosmic catastrophe. Dürrenmatt also adapted several plays, among them Strindberg's The Dance of Death under the title Play Strindberg (1969; NY, 1971; London, 1973) and Shakespeare's King John and Titus Andronicus. All his plays are fundamentally pessimistic, reflecting the anxieties of their time.