Death and the Maiden comes to Hampton Hill Playhouse (From Wandsworth Guardian)
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Death and the Maiden comes to Hampton Hill Playhouse
9:00am Wednesday 24th October 2012 in Freetime By Patrick Grafton-Green
Tense: Death and the Maiden
Ariel Dorfman’s moral thriller Death and the Maiden will be brought to the Hampton Hill Playhouse by the Park Players next week.
The play’s director, Malcolm Maclenan, 69, says: “It is a sensational play. It’s very dramatic – a sort of whodunit but it also puts forward these polemic arguments of the human condition.”
Written by its Chilean playwright in 1990, it centres on three characters: Paulina and her husband, Gerado, and a doctor called Roberto Miranda.
Paulina is a former political prisoner who was raped by her captors.
Years later, when Gerado gets a flat tire, he his helped by Dr Miranda, who drives him to his house.
When they arrive Paulina recognises Miranda’s voice as that of her rapist and she takes him captive in order to extract a confession.
The play is writer Ariel Dorfman’s response to the horrors of Pinochet’s Chile, but still very much applies to the world we live in.
Mr Maclenan says: “The great thing about this play is that it is as relevant today as the day it was written.
“I used to play rugby with former SAS soldiers who did tours in Northern Ireland. I asked them how is the situation is going to be resolved. They told me it could never be resolved.
“Someone will have lost a brother or a sister or a mother and it goes on and on. The same can be applied to conflict all over the world.
“The doctor represents oppression, the woman revenge and the husband eternal political compromise.”
The thought-provoking play will be performed by local amateur theatre group the Park Players.
The group was formed 45 years ago by a group of women in a babysitting circle who had an interest in theatre.
Mr Maclenan joined in 1972, and has been acting and directing for them ever since.
Death and the Maiden, Hampton Hill Playhouse, October 31 to November 3. Tickets available on the box office 020 8977 4051.
