As Smith read the Duras text (..."reading" as Duras instructed, as opposed to traditionally memorizing the text...), the lights very slowly rose over the duration of the 45-minute play, on both the stage and the audience, while the theater space was almost entirely filed with white smoke. The last visual sensation toward the end of the show was one of being on a hazy beach at dawn. In the essay, "On Staging The Malady of Death," director McElhinney remarked The Malady of Death, "should be ritualistic." McElhinney(1999), 3-4.
