Humanity In Life And Death: How One Play Intertwines Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’

Dael Orlandersmith as Virgil. (Photo by HanJie Chow)

(REVIEW) At the beginning of Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” the 14th century Italian writer describes himself as being in a dark place spiritually: “Midway upon the journey of our life / I found myself within a forest dark, / For the straightforward pathway had been lost,” read the opening lines of one translation. 

Virgil, the protagonist of the play “Spiritus/Virgil’s Dance,” is in a similar position in the middle of her life: In a job she hates, devoid of passion and breaking promises she’d made to herself in youth. 

“Spiritus” is a one woman show written by and starring award-winning playwright Dael Orlandersmith currently playing at the Rattlestick Theater in New York’s West Village. 

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For those familiar with the “Divine Comedy,” the connection between these two works is readily apparent. Virgil — a literary representation of the ancient Roman poet — is the one who saves Dante from himself and guides him through the afterlife, setting him on a journey toward God and ultimate fulfillment. 

In “Spiritus,” Virgil saves herself, though it’s not without the help of dear friends and life-changing sorrow. When her parents die over the course of a year, marring her family and community with tragedy, Virgil is inspired by the funeral director — a family friend — and her dad’s hospice nurse and becomes a mortician. In doing so, she becomes a guide for those who pass on into the afterlife and coaxes out the humanity in both life and death. 

Being a one-woman show, the play comprises one monologue, performed by the titular Virgil — though this is broken up with the excellently-performed voices of other characters, Jimmy the funeral director and Peggy the hospice nurse.  

The play begins in Virgil’s childhood, describing her parents as people she couldn’t understand. They loved to watch television, something Virgil never did, hated their work, something Virgil dreaded, and were largely unknowable to Virgil and her siblings. She believes she will never become like them, and this belief carries her through her twenties, through a job playing world music at a radio station. Even then, she proclaims: “I got youth in my blood, will always have youth in my blood. This is the way my blood will always beat.”

Through the next two decades, however, this proves not to be true, as Virgil recounts moving downtown as part of her writing career and being surrounded by people who love only money and status, using drugs to make living bearable. She becomes like them, losing her passion and care for the world completely.

Here, she mirrors the “Divine Comedy” directly, saying, “I still don’t know why I’m here. The blood beat is gone. I have become like everybody else, lost in a dark wood.”

Then comes the death, the reconnection with Jimmy and connection with Peggy, the call to pursue her vocation — helping the dead pass on with grace and dignity. 

The set features capsules from Virgil’s life, each surrounded by a stringy curtain: Her childhood home, her radio desk, her dad’s hospice room. Light in particular plays a large role, illuminating specific moments and transporting the audience where Virgil goes: from the cemetery where her parents are buried to the galaxy beyond. 

It’s a heartbreaking, but powerful performance, with a message that lingers. That’s in part because it’s both painfully relatable and, in shame, rarely ever discussed. 

Within seconds of the play’s beginning, Virgil poses the ultimate philosophical question: “One becomes aware of their own time. Do they look back at themselves? Connecting, reconnecting, wondering: Have I done it right? Have I used time — my time right?” It’s a difficult question to consider, and even more difficult if the answer is no. 

Still, “Spiritus” offers encouragement that it isn’t too late to use your time right — even if that involves a midlife career change to something wholly unexpected — and serves as a rousing call-to-action to take charge of your life and love fiercely and unconditionally.

The scenes that describe her work as a mortician are scientific and graphic — as graphic as they can be without another body on stage, described evocatively. 

The most memorable is her first job working for the city, in which she embalms a homeless drug addict who was once a dancer. It becomes her mission to honor the life of the woman — even going so far as to buy makeup at the drugstore to touch her up, though no one else will see her face — and restore some of the humanity that was taken from her. It’s something that everyone on some level hopes for, to be respected after death, and in this it’s a reminder that everyone is deserving of that same respect while alive. 

The play ends with Leonard Cohen’s song “Night Comes On,” a particularly heartbreaking delight. Cohen, a Jewish poet and musician, often wrote about the themes present in both the “Divine Comedy” and “Spiritus” — death, sin, hopelessness and, ultimately, finding light in the darkness. 

“Night Comes On” reminisces on the death of both of Cohen’s parents, holding onto the lessons they taught him — both good and bad — as he grew up, seemingly against his will. As he does, he begins to feel stifled by love and trapped in his life. 

By the end of the song, though, he’s reached a kind of peace found among his children and friends. It’s similar to the peace Virgil finds in “Spiritus” and that Dante finds in Heaven:

And the night comes on, it's very calm

I want to cross over, I want to go home

But she says, "Go back, go back to the world" 

“Spiritus/Virgil’s Dance” is at Rattlestick Theater from February 16 — March 9. You can find tickets here.

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Jillian Cheney is Religion Unplugged’s Senior Culture Correspondent. She writes about film, TV, music, art, books and more. Find her on Twitter @_jilliancheney.