A powerful and poetic play, with echoes of Jean-Paul Sartre's Huis Clos and Euripides' Medea. From the author of Death and the Maiden.

A Man and a Woman in purgatory – a soul-less white room. Each is interrogated in turn by the other. Each is groping for forgiveness and contrition. But one of them has done something unforgiveable...

Ariel Dorfman's play Purgatorio was first performed at the Seattle Repertory Theatre, Seattle, USA, in November 2005. (An earlier version was first performed in a rehearsed reading at the Criterion Theatre, London, in November 2001).

The play was first staged in the UK at the Arcola Theatre, London, in January 2008.

'Challenging, aggressively explorative and massively disturbing' — Seattleplays.com

'A charged, poetic inquiry into human relationships... In just three scenes, Dorman delivers a ferocious battle of wills' — Theatremania.com

'A dramatist of serious quality' — The Times