A Good Death

Curio's production of Death and the Maiden is powerful, intimate.

by Mark Cofta

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Published: Oct 10, 2007

TRIPLE THREAT: (from left) Paul Kuhn, Jerry Rudasill and Erika Hicks in Curio's thought-provoking Death and the Maiden. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

An intriguing irony emerges during Curio Theatre Co.'s suspenseful Death and the Maiden: Three characters rarely mention God but seek absolution, and the play is performed in Curio's West Philadelphia home, a church sanctuary.

Ariel Dorfman's 1991 drama (filmed in 1994 by Roman Polanski) confronted contemporary issues in his native Chile, but here plays more as an allegory. In an unnamed country recently relieved of 17 years' dictatorship, lawyer Gerard will head a human rights commission to explore kidnappings, torture and murder committed by the outlaw regime. His commission will not name names or issue sentences, only seek the truth. Gerard's wife, Paulina, still suffers nightmares and worse from her imprisonment years ago. Snatched on the streets, she endured torture and rape for her role in peaceful student demonstrations against the government. One night a stranger enters their secluded beach home — a good Samaritan helping Gerard with a flat tire — and Paulina recognizes his voice. She's certain that soft-spoken doctor Roberto Miranda was her Schubert-playing tormentor. She violently takes him captive, holds off Gerard with a gun, and faces the play's central questions: How do justice and revenge differ? How do we punish those who've wronged us without becoming them?

Director Gay Carducci makes these issues our own with a powerful, intimate production. Paul Kuhn's set design keeps the action close to us with elegantly simple ramps and platforms, and he's ideally cast as Miranda, his innate niceness stalling any easy conclusions about the doctor's past. As Paulina, Erika Hicks' passionate conviction proves that he's a monster — we want to believe her, to ease her torment and take bloody vengeance — but has her still-seething trauma warped her objectivity? This tension makes Gerard's role as mediator (though he's not neutral or innocent, we learn) challenging and crucial, and Jerry Rudasill navigates it well.

As the past unfolds through layers of interrogation and confession — in this world, there's what one says, and then the truth, and finally "the real, real truth" — Death and the Maiden leads us to universal questions about whether, and how, we move forward after atrocities. The answers don't come easy, and the questions must be asked again and again.

(m_cofta@citypaper.net)

Death and the Maiden, Through Oct. 27, Curio Theatre Co., Calvary Church, 815 S. 48th St., 215-525-1350, www.curiotheatre.org

 

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