Vapid and pretentious: Visit From An Unknown Woman, at Hampstead Theatre, reviewed

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. Is she delusional? Probably, but the script takes her autobiography very seriously. At the same time, she comes across as a fantasy dreamed up by a narcissistic scribbler. Her outfit, a black velvet kaftan, suggests the enigmatic power of an erotic sorceress. She claims to have read all his books twice over because their meaning escapes her the first time around. On his birthday she delivers white flowers to his door, anonymously, to keep him guessing.

Natalie Simpson plays Marianne credibly enough and she’s joined on stage by a younger version of herself, played by Jessie Gattward, who interprets Marianne’s mental state through the medium of dance. This is a risky idea as it creates two conflicting focuses of interest. Do we listen to Marianne’s sentimental ramblings, or do we follow the supplementary footnotes provided by the dancer?