Purgatorio

Published Wednesday 23 January 2008 at 12:25 by Natasha Tripney

A nameless man and women stand in a white room. It’s an institution of some sort, a cold clinical space. He carries a briefcase and wears the white coat of a doctor, while she wears the black cotton uniform of an inmate. At first, the situation seems simple and familiar. But then the characters swap roles and it becomes clear that something more is going on here than a mere doctor-patient therapy session. This strange white space is a kind of purgatory and the characters evoke the story of Medea and Jason.

This intense and visceral two-hander by the Chilean playwright Ariel Dorfman, here receiving its British premiere, uses classical narrative to explore the limits of forgiveness and the depths of human pain, the abyss of betrayal. As a woman driven over the edge, compelled to commit the most awful of acts, Adjoa Andoh gives a vivid, volatile performance, howling and beating her chest. Patrick Baladi is similarly strong, if slightly less full-on, allowing the occasional, necessary glimmer of humour to puncture what is an inevitably harrowing evening of theatre. Director Daniel Guerra keeps things tautly paced, even if the power of the piece sometimes gets lost in the Arcola’s cave-like main space.