News-Letter

For a discerning theatergoer, watching Latin American playwright Ariel Dorfman's Death and the Maiden can be a useful lesson in distinguishing valuable political insight from genuine artistic value. As a self-contained conversation on some of the most delicate issues in global politics, Dorfman's script, simply put, is exceptional. Death and the Maiden does not just stake out moral territory. Instead it charts every nuance of modern debates about amnesty, the rule of law and personal retribution that its author, as a witness to Chile's embattled century political life, knew up close.

But in its latest manifestation at Centerstage's Pearlstone Theater, Death and the Maiden never asks its audience to develop Dorfman's bird's eye view of social turmoil. Directed by Lillian Groag, the three-person play opens with an air of prosperity and pleasantry that may be reassuring at first, yet dissolves away as the demons that haunt its seemingly well-to-do characters break to the surface. This contrast between comfort and chaos is this rendition's most memorable stylistic device, although it is quickly exhausted. And what takes its place? Innovative dialogue? Novel characterization? Intricate plotting?

Or none of the above. With Death and the Maiden, any stabs at breakthrough artistry are precluded by the urgency of its political content -- an urgency that, curiously enough, at once weds its protagonists to meticulously analyzed political stances and gives them an air of exasperating generality in everything else. Unfortunately, Centerstage's instances of technical finesse are not enough to conceal Dorfman's inability to create characters that, while representing the universal results of barbarous government, stand as full-fledged individuals.

According to the production notes, Death and the Maiden is set in "a country that is probably Chile, but that could be any country that has just given itself a democratic government after a long period of dictatorship" around 1990. However, all we see of this hazily-defined nation is the inside of the beach house where government lawyer Gerardo Escobar (Triney Sandoval) is on retreat with his wife Paulina (Mhari Sandoval). Aside from a flat tire and brief argument over Gerardo's appointment to a panel designed to investigate the crimes of the old regime, there is little that interrupts their domestic peace. But for Paulina, everything changes the moment a recent acquaintance of Gerardo's, Dr. Roberto Miranda (Stephen Rowe), drops by to pay his respects.

Having been abducted, raped and tortured by the recently deposed government years before, Paulina believes that the doctor was one her tormentors. Even now, the memory of her ordeal manifests itself as a general sense of distress and paranoia, which soon boils over into violence. After knocking Miranda unconscious and tying him to a kitchen chair, Paulina holds both the doctor and her husband at gunpoint, determined to extort a confession from Miranda, but uncertain whether she will spare his life.

Faced with a plot infused with uncertainties, Groag and her production team call attention to the high suspense of Dorfman's script by presenting his material in the most lucid manner imaginable. The lighting effects, courtesy of Mark McCullough, have a grandiose, atmospheric feel, while scenic designer Todd Rosenthal's approximation of an immaculate, wood-paneled shore house provides plenty of space for the actors to maneuver as well as a valuable air of incongruity. It is the last place you would expect doubts about Miranda's guilt, or Paulina's insanity, to explode into the open, serving as a reminder that isolation is no remedy for personal distress.

Despite this composed presentation, the trio of actors often strain against their roles. Mr. Sandoval, for instance, handles Gerardo's matter-of-fact early scenes quite effectively, but resorts to a loud confusion when he is pushed towards truly harrowing material. Rowe's levelness and toughness allows him to command his role much more effectively and hold to Miranda's professed innocence, even if his calmness is not wholly credible. Paulina, in Mrs. Sandoval's hands, is in many ways Miranda's opposite. However, her wild fluctuations resolve into an overall heaviness of tone that provides a hysterical, but equally emphatic counterpart to the doctor's.

Mixed into Dorfman's archetypal political scenario, there are a couple references to past art and philosophy that serve as interesting, though tangential, intellectual coordinates. A few remarks that Miranda makes on Nietzsche, along with the Schubert composition from which Death and the Maiden takes its title, are the most obvious. But one also feels a classicizing impulse in Dorfman's script, beyond its occasional echoes of ancient Greek tragedy. Thanks to Centerstage, it is possible to appreciate the order and lucidity of the piece's central conflict, which Groag presents with admirable directness. What we gain from Death and the Maiden is a fine, if generic synopsis of the traumatic after-effects of torture. In the end, Dorfman spurs us to lasting political ruminations, even though, when we're watching it, his piece seems like something less than high art.

Death and the Maiden will be showing at Centerstage through November 26. Call (410)-332-0033 or visit www.centerstage.org for more information.

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