Inferno

Last night I had a front row seat to Hell.

The Synetic Theater of Arlington presented "Dante," their adaptation of the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri at the Rosslyn Spectrum Theater, and I was there, right on the front row by the lip of the stage. The Synetic Theater is one of the more interesting small performing arts companies in the metropolitan Washington area. They emphasize motion and dance in their productions, and even have done some things such as their recent Carmen production totally without words. In "Dante," the limited spoken dialogue served mainly to provide continuity between scenes and to introduce what we were about to witness in movement and dance.

The production stars Ben Cunis as Dante and Greg Marzullo as Virgil, plus a large ensemble cast that fills the subsidiary roles and acts as lost souls in Purgatory and Hell, including my friend Scott.

A steeply raked stage provided the main element of the set, with stone-like concentric circles acting as arches and wings plus representing the Circles of Hell. Trap doors were scattered all over the stage floor for dancers to use for entrances and exits throughout the show. Theatrical smoke billowed over the stage (and often into the audience) during much of the evening.

Music design is by Konstantine Lortkipanidze, their resident composer, but I'm not sure if this was original composition, adaptations of existing works, or a combination of the two. From where I was sitting, though, it was all very, very loud.

The show used a series of twelve scenes to depict Dante's dream-vision of Hell, with the ancient Roman poet Virgil serving as his guide. At each level of Hell, the cast, using different costuming and occasional props, danced, moved, and writhed in frenetic ways to illustrate the torments of the damned at that particular level of Hell, and Dante interacted with them, sometimes at his peril.

This is a very interesting production, and one that is hard to describe. Go see it if you can. It runs through March 21.