DEATH AND THE MAIDEN” ASKS, SHOULD TORTURE SHOULD BE USED TO FORCE THE GUILTY TO CONFESS THEIR CRIMES?
After the urbane wit of Neil Simon’s BAREFOOT IN THE PARK and the lewd, crude cornpone comedy of THE GREAT AMERICAN TRAILER PARK MUSICAL by David Nehls and Betsy Kelso, Hot Summer Nights at the Kennedy’s nail-biting presentation of Chilean-American dramatist and Duke University professor Ariel Dorfman’s harrowing 1990 psychological drama, DEATH AND THE MAIDEN, is an unexpected splash of ice water in the face. The subject is vigilante justice and DEATH AND THE MAIDEN asks an especially timely question, “Should kidnapping and torture be used to force the guilty to confess their crimes?” On the surface, desperate housewife Paulina Salas Escobar (played alternately with fury and heart-wrenching poignancy by Benji Taylor Jones) has plenty of justification. Fifteen years ago, while she was a college student in an unnamed South American country, Paulina was scooped up off the street, imprisoned without charges, blindfolded, and brutally raped and tortured over and over by representatives of t
