Ariel Dorfman

DEATH AND THE MAIDEN

We crave justice – but when does our desire for fairness turn into a thirst for revenge? A young woman is waiting for her husband – a prominent lawyer – to return home from work. Skittish like an animal, strong-willed by nature, wounded in her past, she yearns for peace, yet cannot forget what has come to pass. Their marriage brought them together in the cruellest chapter of her life, and they both hope for light, tomorrow and a punishment for the brutal abuse to arrive. But their understanding of the sentence and its execution differs radically.

As night falls, the husband returns, bringing with him a courteous stranger. The helpful doctor reminds the wife of her darkest days, and their fates become increasingly entangled. Three people who were never meant to meet are brought together over the course of one day that will alter all their lives irreversibly. The question of the inevitability of punishment – and a trial with no witnesses – hits truer than any weapon.

"Death and the Maiden", the thriller by playwright Ariel Dorfman has been staged on the world’s most renowned stages for over thirty years, and was adapted for the screen in 1994 by Roman Polanski. Dorfman wrote the play in the late 1980s as he was spending time in Chile and witnessing the country’s cumbersome transition from Augusto Pinochet’s authoritarian regime to democracy. However, the intense, even explosive clash of characters undeniably continues to strongly resonate even today, reminding us that the past never truly leaves the present.