Even before it started, “Purgatorio” gave me the creeps. It was the set – a sterile, white square that didn’t even fill up the Allen Bales’ tiny stage. With little more than a cot and metal chair, it could have been a hospital wing, child’s bedroom or padded cell – all prime real estate for theatrical head-screwage. And it was set in Purgatory? Oh boy, here we go.
But, all things considered, Purgatory is a pretty down-to-earth place, where divine correction officers in glasses and lab coats try to rehabilitate the damned for a fresh life on Earth. Here we find Jason (Stephen Brunson) and Medea (Amy Handra), a couple from Greek mythology who wind up in the second level of Dante’s Inferno after the nastiest lovers’ spat in history.
In the myth, when Jason leaves Medea for a younger dame, she murders their children. Dramaturge Tiffany Towns graciously includes some back story in the program for us layfolk, but Dorfman’s characters aren’t pure Ovidian pastiche, jumping between poetic language and modern F-bombs as they duke it out over questions of love, revenge and forgiveness – ultimately making you wonder if their little white Purgatory isn’t straight-up Hell.
Even in the afterlife, Medea’s still ticked, and Handra radiates a pure, black hatred that overpowers Jason’s attempts to play it cool. Brunson takes a little longer to hit his stride but eventually carries the young conqueror with sufficient naïve confidence. He treats her repentance like another military conquest, while she seeks to poison everything around her from sheer spite. The pair forms a wonderful anti-chemistry, each bringing out the other’s filth while too conceited to achieve real intimacy.
While there’s plenty of fodder for bookworms – the script is packed with allusions to the Garden of Eden, St. Augustine, Plato and probably many more classics majors will recognize – Dorfman plays on brainy subject matter without requiring English class dissection. His imagery is attainable but not blunt; the symbolism intellectual, yet pertinent.
My seat was one of a handful shoehorned on the stage to make a fourth side. Handra and Brunson act to the round seamlessly and naturally, but the Allen Bales just isn’t built for it. While those added seats are definitely the best in the house (if you don’t mind the clouds of thespian spit), I doubt if the same intimacy carries to the regular sections. It made me wonder what this department could do with a legitimate flex-space theatre (basically, a great, empty black box to arrange however you want).
Whether or not it’s meant for the round, Allen Bales allows the actors a finesse you can’t get in the big auditoriums, and they manage complicated tones of dependence and sexual tension that fall into place as the narrative unfolds. Their only weakness comes at certain points when the two in turn don white coats and switch from interrogated to interrogator. They never seem really comfortable blending desperate purgatory inmate and divine correction officer. Handra’s bookish alter-ego especially doesn’t show the hints of affection for her patient I sensed Dorfman was after, though it’s a small price to pay for the sheer intensity of Medea.
But emotion-driven narratives are tricky. They’re tricky to write and they’re tricky to do. But when they work, they sing. “Purgatorio” works. Dorfman’s impeccable script is never cryptic nor sentimental, and Kontos doesn’t indulge in “Black Swan” mind-sploitation. Every part feels purposeful and necessary, finding its place in a powerful tale of love and hate.
