When I was a teenager, Death and The Maiden was one of the plays I read when I was discovering that theatre could be angry, obscene and unafraid of speaking truth to power. Ariel Dorfman’s tale introduces us to Paulina, a torture survivor who becomes convinced, but can’t prove, that the urbane neighbour her husband, a civil rights lawyer, has befriended was one of the secret servicemen who imprisoned her during a now-fallen military dictatorship.
When the play premiered in 1991, it delivered a shock blow to the culture of compromise and denial emerging as Dorfman’s homeland, Chile, made the transition to democracy, a year after the end of Pinochet’s dictatorship. But with Hollywood star Thandie Newton now in the lead role, the play seems drained of nuance and power, and left me wondering if the impression it made on me so many years ago was merely a silly symptom of the teenage taste for trashy melodrama.
What I loved about Death and The Maiden at the time was that it was unafraid of showing the dirt of human relationships — the things grown-ups did but didn’t let the adolescents see.
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