The result is a remarkable hour of visual storytelling and a political/dramatic treatise that doesn't quite jell. But while the message is a bit muddled, Episale succeeds in risking strong visual statements and pushing his audience to look at things they might want to avoid seeing.

But one wonders whether he may have taken the original 1803 script too far. "The Captive" is a short play for a single female character who pleads with her jailer to listen to her story. She has been placed in a dungeon of a mental asylum by a "tyrant husband" who "forged a tale which chained me in this dreary cell."

Episale stages the monologue as if the Captive (Nina C. Buck) were a political prisoner monitored by three masked guards who ignore, then abuse her.

But the drama begins long before the first lines are spoken. As the audience enters, we see Buck pacing on an empty black stage. She is separated from us by sheets of clear plastic which shimmer and reflect overhead spotlights, creating a fantastic and liquid futuristic image.

A row of stark signs caution the audience. "You will not interact with The Captive." "You will not offer food or comfort to The Captive." "You will not smoke within 20 feet of the entrance."

Guards patrol the audience, checking tickets, making notes, searching bags, even slamming a supposed audience member against the wall before escorting him out. Pre-show announcements are made over a bullhorn, and the audience is given a preliminary dose of collective guilt: "Thank you for coming. Without you, none of this would have been possible."

Dressed in a plain white cotton shift, Buck pleads The Captive's innocence through fractured, repeating poetry as the guards wield flashlights and clubs. She hyperventilates. They cover her head with a black hood.

Later, as a narrator reads excerpts from presidential speeches promoting liberty, the guards arrange her in submissive and sexual postures and take photographs with an instant camera.

This is harsh political indictment, with some parallels to the character dilemma in the Lewis play, but far from an easy fit. Episale's staging charges the guards with abusing a character they are supposed to protect, and projects that guilt onto the audience for silently condoning it.

But in doing so, it projects the prisoner only as victim — guiltless of any personal participation in acts that led to her incarceration. That stance may work for the pathetic wife of a "tyrant husband" but translates imperfectly to prisoners of war who have at least some accountability for their circumstance.