Claire cycles through three husbands over the course of the play. She arrives to Güllen with her seventh husband in tow, but promptly abandons him to marry a German film star in Güllen’s cathedral, as per her childhood wish. Not a day later, she divorces the star and prepares to marry a Nobel Prize recipient. Like everyone else in Claire’s entourage, the trio receive rhyming names; they are Moby, Hoby, and Zoby, respectively. Stage directions for the play indicate that the same actor can play the three roles, which only underscores Claire’s view of her husbands as interchangeable and indistinct.
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Husbands VII-IX Character Timeline in The Visit
The timeline below shows where the character Husbands VII-IX appears in The Visit. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Act 1
...she is grotesque. She begins to detrain with her entourage, including her Butler and her Husband VII , but is stopped by an irate Train Supervisor demanding that she offer an explanation...
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...to her seventh husband. His real name is Pedro, but she has effectively renamed him Moby to rhyme with Boby, her Butler’s name.
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Act 2
...requests on guitar. Claire contemplates her upcoming wedding, not a week after her divorce from Moby. This leads her to recall her former husbands. She expresses particular admiration for her first...
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Back at the Golden Apostle, we see Claire’s soon-to-be eighth husband join her on her balcony. (A stage direction allows the same actor that played...
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Act 3
...Claire has found a ninth husband only a few hours after marrying (then divorcing) her eighth, the journalists rush out of the shop. Not long after, Ill’s wife and her customers...
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Coincidentally, Claire is also in the woods, together with her new (ninth) husband and entourage (minus Koby and Loby, whom she shipped off to Hong Kong when they...
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