Death and the Maiden is not an easy play. Its central theme of torture as a tool of political repression serves as a backdrop to a multi-layered debate on the subjects of memory and truth, retribution and forgiveness, culture and barbarity and moral courage and its absence.

Can the affable Roberto, a doctor, really be the man who tortured and raped Paulina, many years before; the woman who now, through an ironic twist of fate, has him in her power? Will she finally put her demons to rest and find peace? Is his contrition genuine? Can the truth ever really be known? Will they each find salvation?

Never didactic, always questioning, Ariel Dorfman's play embraces doubt and never looks for easy answers. Each character is determinedly un-heroic, deeply ambiguous and, in their own way, flawed.

Its claustrophobic intensity finds an ideal setting in the intimacy of the Burton Taylor Studio; Elaine English plays Paulina with brittle ferocity, in counterpoint to the pragmatism and barely contained ambition that Andrew Money-Kyrle brings to Paulina's husband Gerado, while it is Simon Hill's task, as the profoundly equivocal character of the doctor, Roberto Miranda, to intimate how short is the distance from decency to decadence.

Every question the play asks is just as relevant and resonant today as it was 15 years ago when the production was first staged. This is a play that deserves to be seen.

Further performances by the Agape Ensemble are at Bernard Hall, Cuddington, on April 22 and 23.