Death and the Maiden

Altera Vitae's third production at MainLine Theatre is Death and the Maiden by Ariel Dorfman. Produced with a lot of heart the selection of this play is a great vehicle for the company artistic director Carolyn Fe Trinidad in the lead role of Paulina Salas. For Carolyn this play is deeply personal, “I've chosen to do this play to bring out the silent scream in everybody.” and this does come across on stage in her performance. Also well cast is Sam Croitoru as Dr. Roberto Miranda who not only fits the role physically like a glove he also plays his part technically accurate to the hilt.

With each new production, the company partners itself with a valuable, charitable organization whose mandate is similar to themes in the play. This production is dedicated to RIVO an organisation working with survivors of torture and other forms of organized political violence and the ongoing effects of their ordeal.

This is my final review of the season, *pre-Fringe naturally, having covering 25 plays since the new year I was hoping to go out with a bang to cap off the season before my four months hiatus. Unfortunately this production is not the highly publicized and much anticipated bang that I was longing for. The play is of course very well written and the story is still current as a drama and very interesting with just the right amount of added humor so well suited to Carolyn Fe's talents, but this production does not measure up to the company's previous work in both direction and over all the scope of the design. I think that it is time for the company to try on a different venue for it's next production, Bent, fall 2009.

Flawed in both stage and light design from a pour stage layout and choice of set pieces (that even upstage the action) to a very tedious lighting plot that is either much darker than the actual material of the story or too far bright for the eye to endure. There are a couple of good effects that amount to a few clever tricks that are lost to the audience depending on where you sit in relation to center stage, however they're too few to outweigh all the rest of the mess because of either poor lighting or forced blocking. The pacing sags all too often making it difficult to stay focused on the unfolding story. Also the venue is heating up, as it tends to do seasonally, so the end result between not enough light and slow pacing is a few heads were spotted nodding off; this despite the only approximately 100 minutes one act with no intermission running time. Finally there is the very questionable casting selection of William Ward as Paulina’s husband Gerardo Escobar; it is perplexing. Not only is he far too young for the role, the relationship comes across at best as colleagues. Sadly there is no believable chemistry or compassion on the spousal level which is so necessary to convincingly pull the relationship together. Playing to May 24th. More info... http://www.alteravitae.com/death&themaiden/index.html

*See you on the Fringe...season preview "Fringe For All" June 1st Café Campus 7pm!