Purgatorio

Ariel Dorfman

WHO    Man.

TO WHOM    Woman.

WHERE    A white room, in Purgatory.

WHEN    All time.

WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENED    A Man and a Woman are alone in a white room. At first we assume they are in a mental asylum and that he is her analyst. We soon come to understand, however, that they are in Purgatory and that he is her interrogator. She has murdered her two sons and her husband’s younger lover. Unless she can repent, she will remain in the room for ever. Then, as the lights go down and back up again, it is the Man who is being interrogated by the Woman. He has committed suicide following the murder of his two sons by his estranged wife. He desperately wants to leave the room, to be reborn into the afterlife, and is quick to repent of any wrongdoing. However, the Woman is not convinced and accuses him of fabricating mistakes in order that he can be fast-tracked out of there. She produces a vase which he claims to have broken and then blamed the accident on his grandmother, and for which he is now sorry. ‘Except,’ she says, ‘there is nothing to be sorry for.’ The Woman maintains that he is making it up. In a statement written by his grandmother, his grandmother states: ‘I can’t forgive myself for having let the child be punished for something I did.’ The Man, however, is insistent that it was he who broke the vase. The speech that follows is his version of events.

WHAT TO CONSIDER

•	The play takes its inspiration from the Ancient Greek legend of Jason and Medea, in which Medea kills their children because of Jason’s infidelity.
•	At the heart of the play lie questions to do with retribution and forgiveness. You may like to read other plays of Ariel Dorfman, Death and the Maiden, Reader and Widows, in which these themes are further explored.

WHAT HE WANTS

•	To prove that he is sorry.
•	To leave the room.
•	To be reborn.
•	To have ‘another stab at life’.
•	Redemption.

KEYWORDS  hated  bothered  lunged  angrily  blamed  swore  shouted  stupid  dribbling  trembled  pity  sorry

Man

We were at lunch, as usual. Alone, the two of us, my grandmother and me. I hated having to accompany her, hated my mother for forcing me to. Could you pass me that, pass me this, this that this that that. Just to bother me, to make me pay attention to the old woman. Till my grandmother asked me for one last thing, I can’t remember what it… a napkin, maybe – […] Whatever it was, it was at her fingertips, all she had to do was move her finger an inch, less than an inch. I lunged across the table for it, angrily, no patience whatsoever, and broke the damn vase. And when my mother came in at the end of the meal, I blamed my grandmother. I swore she’d done it. And I liked it when my mother shouted at her, you stupid old woman. Stupid old woman. Years later I went into her room one last time, before I left on that journey – and crumbs were dribbling from her lips and her hand went out slowly, so slowly to the crumb and brought it to her mouth that trembled and it fell again and I tried to help her but she just stared past me as if I didn’t exist and I saw she was going to die soon all by herself in that room and I felt a twinge of pity then, a hint of what I would feel later, now, when I think about her, that I never saw her again, never told her I was sorry.