KARACHI: One distinctly remembers Roman Polanski’s movie version of Chilean playwright Ariel Dorfman’s drama Death and the Maiden released in the first half of the 1990s. There were three principal actors in it: Sigourney Weaver, Stuart Wilson and Ben Kingsley. Weaver is very good in the film. Given the aforementioned big names from the world of entertainment, one didn’t expect much from a stage production of Death and the Maiden directed by Faisal Khaliq which completed its three-day run on Sunday at the Arts Council of Pakistan. But, it has to be said, one wasn’t disappointed with the youngsters’ performance. Their hard work paid off.
The story begins from a nonverbal scene, which lasts for quite a few minutes, in which a woman, Paulina (Abida Bokhari) is seen fidgeting around the house on a rainy night. A little later, her husband Gerardo (Ali Hassan) comes in, wearing a suit, looking a little ruffled. He tells her that the tyres of his car flattened because of which he had to take a lift in the car of some nice man.
Their conversation reveals that the husband has been given an important post by the head of the country, which will allow him to investigate wrongdoings of some people in the past. Paulina is keen on the subject of seeing the wrongdoers get punished. This leads to a heated argument, as Gerardo says that he is new to the job and will take time to settle in.
As they go to sleep, someone knocks on their door. Gerardo opens the door. It is Dr Robert (Mati Mukhtlif), the man who had given him a lift in his car. He needs some time to spend at Gerardo’s home. As the two talk, Paulina sits in the doctor’s car and drives away. Gerardo reasons that she’s upset because the two have just had an argument.
But in the next scene, the doctor is seen tied to a chair with ropes and Paulina is moving around him with a gun in her hand. It turns out that in the nondemocratic days of the country, he had held Paulina captive and tortured her. Now Paulina wants revenge. Gerardo tries to convince his wife that she may be mistaken. From here on, the story catches pace as memory and deception become the focal point of the plot.
Death and the Maiden had a few things going in its favour. First of all, the set that the director was able to put together was nicely done. One says this because given the shortage of space at the council’s Studio Upstairs where the drama was produced, the director’s understanding of how to use space, tastefully at that, was noteworthy. Then the actors put in a lot of hard work, which was evident. The only thing that one would like to mention is that Ali Hassan and Abida Bokhari need to work on their voice modulation. This means, the emotion should gel with the pitch of the voice.
If one was hard pressed to criticise, then the Urdu translation needed to be revisited. The seriousness of the subject required a translation which was both eloquent and punchy. Phrases such as ‘kya ukhaar lia’ lend a colloquial touch to the script.
Published in Dawn, September 29th, 2026
