twenty years on...

DEATH AND THE MAIDEN

by Ariel Dorfman

Harold Pinter Theatre

Director: Jeremy Herrin

Design: Peter McKintosh

Lighting: Neil Austin

Music: Stephen Warbeck

Sound: Fergus O'Hare

Fight Director: Bret Yount

Photography: Ellie Kurttz 

Couldn't resist this for just £15, having seen the original at The Royal Court just over twenty years ago. I was on an eight month unemployment-stint between theatre-in-education at Theatr Clwyd and The Gingerbread Man at South Hill Park, Bracknell! It didn't sit comfortably between the two but it was what I was doing: the Court would have been a first choice! This Saturday matinée transported me back thirty years to the eighties and how I spent most Saturdays, cramming in two shows - and a film - and spending all my paper-round money...

Some poignant thoughts from the programme (my summary) by Clive Stafford Smith (Director, Reprieve):

• the cycle: violence justifying violence?
• i.e. George Bush / Tony Blair
• the eternal trap/repetition of hatred
• victim becomes perpetrator
• the repercussions of...
• sitting in judgement on others: human vs human
• privately and publicly
• the quantum of evidence
• the burden of proof
• the rights of the victim
• the rights of the perpetrator
• the courts of law
• due process
• the courts of public opinion
• denial vs reconciliation
• reconciliation vs revenge
• re-victimisation of victims
• accountability vs compassion
• war vs truth
• a the need for the 'legal' justification of war
• the procedures of...
• complicity: who decides and how?

• Thandie Newton was compelling: slick, cinematic, resolved...