Letter from an Unknown Woman is perhaps Stefan Zweig’s best-known novella, published in 1922 and concerning a woman who declares her passion to a man she silently adores in an anonymous letter.
This is not a faithful version of that story, as reflected in the title. Christopher Hampton’s sleek but quizzical adaptation moves the drama to 1934, although it still takes place in the home of a bachelor, writer and Lothario, here called Stefan (James Corrigan).
We hear how Marianne (Natalie Simpson) was the girl next door who began to watch Stefan’s every move. There is something dangerous, and queasy, in her love, expressed as childhood curiosity at first. Under Chelsea Walker’s direction, a chilling intimacy builds between the couple, with taut pacing reminiscent of the 1948 film adaptation, starring Joan Fontaine.
This is all the more an achievement given the production’s hiccup. Having been staged in Vienna, the press night for this English-language premiere was delayed after the lead actor, Thomas Levin, withdrew. Corrigan stepped in at the 11th hour and does a heroic job, performing off-book and inhabiting his part.
But it is really Simpson’s play and she delivers a well-pitched intensity. Hampton’s decision to have Marianne tell her story, face-to-face, gives her more agency but the gender dynamics between the pair remain complicated nonetheless.
Is she a stalker? It is never suggested in Zweig’s story but this it is what we might call it today. Although the couple are from another era, the shadow of Baby Reindeer looms, as well as the cliche of the “bunny boiler”. Is her testimony an act of self-assertion, a punishment or a tale of self-abnegation in life? It is hard to know.
In some ways, the drama is a study of obsession: this is not only a visit from an unknown woman but a visit to an unknown man to whom she has given life, through fantasy and imagination.
Hampton’s shift in historical setting involves the conflation of the fictional Stefan’s life with Zweig’s own – as a Jewish writer, he was forced to leave Vienna in 1934 due to the rising threat of nazism. “This isn’t a particularly easy time to be a Jewish writer,” Stefan tells Marianne. Hitler is referred to as an “idiot” and a “moron” and Stefan talks about the prospect of having to flee.
It is not clear if a parallel is being drawn between the spectre of this unknown woman and the bigger unknown political forces encroaching on Stefan’s life. Either way it does not quite work, though it does add to the tension. The fear Stefan feels as an Austrian Jew, at this historical tipping point, seems like an underwritten detail, distracting from Marianne’s story, and is too important an issue to lie in the background in the way that it does here.
What is revealed at the beginning of Zweig’s story comes as a twist at the end in the play, making sense of the surreal piles of rose petals in Rosanna Vize’s stage design. It is an original and gripping take on an old story, however many loose ends it leaves.
• At Hampstead theatre, London, until 27 July
