5.0 out of 5 stars
Death Leaves Life, Aug 9 2008
This review is from: Death & the Maiden (DVD)
This is a beautiful play with no script, only the music to Franz Schubert's string quartet piece of the same name to express the feeling of story.
Set in the snow covered Central European forest in the 1830s, a beautiful young maiden comes upon a handsome dark stranger dressed in the riding clothes of a nobleman, and thinks he is lost; he is actually the Angel of Death. As the story progresses, Death finds himself becoming enamoured of the young maiden whose soul he has come to take, and she kindly invites him to stay for the night at the cottage she lives in with her grandfather. As she sleeps, Death watches her, finding his mission becoming more difficult as he drinks in her beauty. In the morning the maiden awakes to find herself alone, and she panicks, leaving the cottage to find that the snow has disappeared and the stranger is crouched down on the ground in the woods, patting the soil on a patch of bare ground shaped like a grave. Thinking it is the grave of her grandfather, the maiden runs over and begins to desperately dig away at the soil. Death tries to stop her, but she resists him, and he finally gives up and walks away. when she does find what he buried there, we realize from her relief that it is the wild rabbit that was seen in several scenes earlier in the play. She runs over to the stranger and embraces him, kissing him. Death resists her kisses at first, but then gives way to his passion, and they end up making love. When it is over, he wills her to shut her eyes, and when she opens them, the maiden finds that the snow has returned and the stranger has disappeared. She wanders around looking for her lover, but he is gone. The story then goes forward several months and we are in the cottage again where the maiden is tending a baby in a cradle, and on the mantlepiece above the fireplace she hides a drawing she has made of the stranger. Death has left behind a life.
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