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I believe THE VISIT is based on a 1964 movie starring Anthony Quinn and Ingrid Bergman.
THE VISIT is a 1956 play by Friedrich Durrenmat, which opened on Broadway in 1958, starring the Lunts, Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne, the fabled "royal couple" of American theatre. This was actually their last Broadway outing, ending a career together of some 30 years on stage.
Kander and Ebb have been working on a musical version of this for about 20 years, with various versions surfacing in different regional theatres, though Chita Rivera has been appearing in all of them. One of the most notable was the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, where she starred opposite John McMartin.
The Broadway version was pared down extensively, and reduced to a single act, by director John Doyle, for a production at the Williamstown Theatre in the summer of 2014. I'm glad the show finally made it to Broadway, though I never found it first-level Kander and Ebb. (But then I loved ZORBA, which I saw 3 times back in 1968; so go figure....)
I also saw the musical based on DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, twice, back when it was known as just ZHIVAGO, at the La Jolla Playhouse, in San Diego. A problematic show, given the epic dimensions of having to show the Russian Revolution, it nevertheless had one of the most beautiful scores I've heard in a long time. I didn't see it on Broadway, though I understand that they added "Somewhere My Love," from the movie score, mostly due to the fact that audiences had been complaining about its absence. Though I find this pandering to audience request distasteful, I can see that they were commercially grasping at straws. The show's chances at success were never more than slim, but I am very glad we have an official recording, even though it contains the requisite movie song.
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