‘Denied’: Powerful Visions of War, Death and Love

Although a printed synopsis explains that “Denied” depicts the “terrified and confused” thoughts of a young war victim just before she dies, much of this dark and challenging 90-minute dance-drama at the Hudson Guild Theatre in Hollywood floats free of any literal narrative context, defining its themes through powerful, isolated images.

Unified by the mournful score of Haynes Brooke and strongly performed by a nine-member company, the episodes mostly juxtapose the anguish of a young woman (Grace C. Renn) with the silent actions of three goddess-figures either perched on platforms high above the stage or clustered in the center for grave, gestural dances-without-steps. Played by Cassandra Bruno, Kerry Norton and Anne Paquette, this threesome gives “Denied” its sense of mystery and its formalist movement focus.

In more conventionally dramatic moments, another woman (Ann Michele Fitzgerald) describes her nightmarish vision (memory? prophecy?) of wartime rape and murder, a vision later acted out in harrowing detail, with Lee Basatti playing the unrelenting aggressor.

Later still, a young man (Dean Nichols) is urged to speak words of love, but they prove mundane and insufficient in the face of the young woman’s pain and soon shatter into statements of ego. Death in the snow offers a promise of peace, but (contrary to a printed text of the piece), there is no transfiguration at the end, no solace whatsoever.

A veteran of contemporary European movement theater, writer-director-choreographer Kevin McCarthy may rely overmuch on off-the-rack Surrealist symbols and he sometimes attempts layered staging ploys too complex for the tiny Hudson space. However, “Denied” expands in one’s consciousness afterward--at once meticulously crafted and unsparingly committed to its pitiless view of human vulnerability.

* “Denied” plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. through Dec. 21. Hudson Guild Theatre, 6543 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. (213) 660-TKTS. $10.