Library Journal
This powerful political drama and psychological thriller by the noted Chilean writer premiered in London last summer, where it won the Time Out Award for Best Play. In March it opened in the United States on Broadway, with direction by Mike Nichols and starring Glenn Close, Richard Dreyfuss, and Gene Hackman. The play focuses on a woman who finds herself in the position to exact revenge upon a man whom she believes to have been her torturer 15 years earlier. In telling this story, the author also addresses the dilemmas which touch all our lives: innocence and evil, truth and lies, forgiveness, and revenge. This is a worthwhile addition to modern drama collections.-- Howard E. Miller, Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Missouri Lib., St. Louis
From the Publisher
Winner of the Olivier Award for Best Play
“Like Sophocles . . . a terrifying moral thriller which combines brilliant theatricality with clear thought and fierce compassion.”
—Sunday Times (London)
AUGUST 2010 - AudioFile
Dorfman’s play gives us a woman who recognizes, in a chance acquaintance of her husband, a man who tortured her during a fascist period in her country’s past, and she takes the opportunity to seek justice. The acting is basically strong, though John Kapelos’s performance is a bit stagy. But the play itself doesn’t transition well to audio. Crucial actions take place without speech, and we don’t know, at once, who has done what to whom, as a viewing audience would. The ending, which is ambiguous in any case, is here enigmatically so. The play has some powerful moments and much to say about issues of power, revenge, and justice, but the simple inability to see it leaves this program unsatisfying. W.M. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine
