‘Switzerland’ Keeps Audiences Guessing

Linda Reiter and Miles Blue in Renaissance Theaterworks’ production of “Switzerland” by Joanna Murray-Smith. Photo by Ross Zentner.

Fans of crisp writing and psychological interplay should rush to Switzerland — not the country (though its reputation for neutrality is a joke line in the play) but to the Renaissance Theaterworks production running through Nov. 9 at its now established home at the Next Act Theatre.

The most likely come-on in a review would describe the play in those all-too familiar detective pulp fiction terms: A cat and mouse game. This one is between a famous crime author in her handsome chalet and a mysterious visitor who looks remarkably like the author’s most famous creation, Tom Ripley, a master of murder and deception.

While all this is true as come-on, the play is better described as a battle of shifting intellectual shapes and dominance involving a reclusive dying novelist – Patricia Highsmith, who did die in 1995 — and her mysterious visitor, Edward, who at first seems naively boyish and impulsive and slowly emerges as eloquent, elusive and as dangerous as the devil in the medieval legend of Faust.

The play is the work of Australia’s most performed playwright, Joanna Murray-Smith, whose L’Appartement was a 2024 presentation by Renaissance reviewed by Urban Milwaukee.

She builds Switzerland as magically as the set suggests the Swiss Alps peeking out of upstage windows (a diorama effect, part of the excellent work from the technical staff). It is a vision from a writer’s head (either Murray-Smith or Highsmith, take your pick). One twisted moment suggests who is in charge followed by a reversal — sometimes comic and consistently mysterious — between a bitter, intellectually superior, racist-sounding, foul-mouthed lesbian author and a cherubic looking visitor (20s? 30s? age indeterminate) who is charmingly cryptic and an expert counterfeiter and dissembler much like the most famous character from Highsmith’s fiction.

Director Laura Gordon (herself an accomplished actress) intimately understands the rhythm of such explosive dialogue, which has to meld tightly together, sometimes so tightly that the audience needs to be constantly attentive.

Inflection is as important as words, and profanity is used for emphasis in verbal combat. The staging expertly employs silence between words, or sound effects to carry the undertow.

An established Chicago actress is used by Gordon to create expert acidity in this sort of dialogue. Linda Reiter also appeared at Renaissance as the quite different Rose Kennedy holding the stage alone in a 2022 production we reviewed.

Reiter puts on a clinic in how to use body and tongue to both scare and amuse us as the nonstop Highsmith. Her fine partner in these battles is a newcomer to me, Miles Blue, who perfectly captures the physical duality of Edward (one moment smiling, the next moment menacing) though there may be more acting tricks to explore in how he separates the various behavioral shifts of the character. But he always hovers as ominous in our minds.

The journey keeps us glued for the next shift in language and who is in charge. Instruments of murder decorate the fireplace, waiting to be employed. Eventually the game is in the audience’s head as well as between two characters.

Ticket information through Nov. 9 is available here. The Next Act Theatre is located in Walker’s Point at 255 S. Water St. (note there are some last-minute but well marked detours).

Dominique Paul Noth served for decades as film and drama critic, later senior editor for features at the Milwaukee Journal. You’ll find his blog here and here. For his Dom’s Snippets go to domnoth.substack.com