Tatiana Hotere, George Henare, centre and Edwin Wright convey strong emotions in Death and the Maiden.
Tatiana Hotere, George Henare, centre and Edwin Wright convey strong emotions in Death and the Maiden.
Acclaimed playwright Ariel Dorfman draws on personal experience of the ruthless military dictatorship that seized power in Chile in the 1970s to deliver a profound and disturbing meditation on the brutality of regimes that systematically use violence against their own citizens.
The play steers away from specific political considerations andtakes on the more difficult issue of how to respond to the dehumanising effects of officially sanctioned cruelty.
Director John Callen brings clarity to the intimate encounter between a torturer and his victim that draws the audience into an intense awareness of how individual lives are wrecked by violence.
The impossibility of effectively articulating such experiences constantly comes up against the overwhelming need to speak truthfully about what happened and much of the drama comes out of the tension between a visceral desire for vengeance and the considerations of justice, healing and reconciliation.
Edwin Wright convincingly voices the frustration of a character who represents the necessity for compromise and bureaucratic process if a society is to deal with the pain of historical injustice.
Tatiana Hotere movingly evokes the fragility of a woman living on the edge of neurotic breakdown as she suppresses the trauma of her rape and torture. When the tables are turned in her confrontation with her torturer she achieves a sense of empowerment that is expressed with a steely sense of purpose and ironic use of gallows humour.
The layers of ambiguity that give the play its unsettling power are most effectively conveyed by George Henare's brilliantly understated performance that raises unanswerable questions about truth, justice, repentance and the possibility of forgiveness.
What:Death and the Maiden Where: The Factory Theatre, Newmarket, to June 13
