is playing at the Theater Alliance on H Street NE. It is a two person, one act play (80 minutes long) dealing with a young man who, in the [unnamed] war committed many atrocities including the rape and murder of 23 women. A woman rescues him from execution as a war criminal by making with him a pseudo-Mephistophiclean agreement that he can live as long as he will do anything she asks, whatever it may be. He agrees.
She winds up torturing him.
Well, the play, which won some Canadian awards, and has been well reviewed by the Post, has some good dramatic moments, but more that are a bit tedious, distasteful and tendentious (whatever that means). It is very well acted.
Moral dilemmas. Sure, he did awful things. But at what point does the good soldier turn into the war criminal? At what point is an eye for an eye good moral policy? Is his savior/torturer any better than he is? Are the two of them in fact peas of a sort of pod, bound together for life?
We saw a play years ago called "Extremities", where a woman captures her would-be rapist and tortures him. We saw Ariel Dorfman's "Death and the Maiden", where a former tortured female prisoner in an unamed Latin American country confronts her torturer years later, by chance.
All these plays present questions. None give any answers. Perhaps there are none.
Should you see this play (which closes this weekend)? If you like staged torture scenes which are well performed, why not?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment