'9 Circles' offers a thoughtful but unemotional descent into cruelty of war

The title of Bill Cain's drama, "9 Circles," alludes to the concentric regions of torment described in Dante's "Inferno." But given the emotional workout actor Julian Elijah Martinez appears to get, in Forum Theatre's valiant staging of this cerebral and sometimes arid piece, the circles might be so many circus hoops.