"Purgatorio": A cerebral male-female tug-of-war

Her eyes ablaze, her mind feverishly calculating and her words poisonous and honeyed, actress Charlayne Woodard is a molten Medea in the new Ariel Dorfman drama, "Purgatorio."

In fact, she is the most pulsatingly alive and compelling element in this cerebral, frustratingly circular and clinical two-person drama, now in its world premiere at Seattle Repertory Theatre.

An internationally noted writer of prose and novels, as well as an accomplished playwright, Dorfman poses a couple of hard, hefty conundrums here: Are true remorse and transcendent forgiveness possible in the wake of abhorrent crimes of passion?

And how can humanity and the world evolve if we remain trapped in a ceaseless cycle of bitter betrayal answered by violent vengeance?

Provocative concerns. But Woodard's performance apart, in "Purgatorio" they are more like disembodied essay questions in a philosophy seminar, than the stuff of urgently engrossing drama.

In his first directorial outing at the Bagley Wright Theatre, new Seattle Rep artistic head David Esbjornson stages the heady script in a sleek, surreal setting, complemented by Steve LeGrand's sparse, eerie sound design.

In a stark Purgatory of sterile white interrogation rooms and hidden video-cams (co-designed by Esbjornson and Nick Schwartz-Hall), Woodard's character (identified only as Woman) confesses unflinchingly to the heinous acts attributed to Medea, in Euripides' tragic Greek drama.

In private "truth-and-reconciliation" sessions with a relentless male interrogator in a lab coat, Woodard is a mercurial dynamo. By turns, she is Medea the brilliantly cunning sexual sorceress. And Medea the wronged wife, misled, compromised and cast off by a ruthless husband.

Most agonizingly, she is the avenger Medea. She not only cops to murdering the new bride of her arrogantly dismissive mate Jason, but to doing the unthinkable: butchering her two young sons to deprive their father of them. And with that act, as Woodard and Esbjornson help us see, she destroys herself. What we don't know, suggests Dorfman, is whether such destruction is fated. Or irreparable.

In the uninterrupted 90-minute span of "Purgatorio," Jason also gets a turn to gloat, fess up to his crimes and, possibly, to repent and move on to other realms. Identified as Man, he is portrayed with buff machismo and glimmers of sorrowful regret by Dan Snook — who, as this chronically exercising gym jock, seems like no match for Medea.

Snook also plays Woodard's interrogator. And she plays his — in a cool, prim, businesslike guise, the opposite of fiery Medea's persona.

The dialogue in "Purgatorio" at times has the ring of Euripidean verse, and of the modern reworkings of Greek tragedy by Sartre and Jean Anouilh. Yet for all the primal passions poetically expressed and discussed, the play often seems like an abstract head-game of self-limiting impact.

Dorfman is far too nuanced a thinker to provide easy answers to the knotty dilemmas he addresses. The shifting identities of the characters compose a kind of metaphysical puzzle. And the issue of whether this man and woman can "close the circle" of violence, and "heal" separately, and together, is a potential source of suspense.

Yet while his best-known play, "Death and the Maiden" (which also explores themes of culpability and vengeance), is rooted in the rich loam of conflict, and keeps you guessing right up to its passionately ambiguous ending, this male-female tug-of-war gets tiresome.

Esbjornson also takes a risk mounting the work in the Rep's largest house, the Bagley Wright. Apart from a stunning final scenic image that takes up much of the stage (and is exquisitely lit by designer Scott Zielinski), "Purgatorio" and its actors might have been better served by the tighter confines of the Rep's Leo K. Theatre.

Or perhaps "Purgatorio" just needs a longer evolution before, like its mythic characters suspended between two realms, it can move on to the next stage.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com