Nothing but a one-room hovel with a corrugated tin roof. That’s the setting of Danai Gurira’s stark drama “Eclipsed,” which captures the lives of four women held as sex slaves, or euphemistically “wives,” of the general in command of a camp somewhere in Liberia during the civil war in the 1990s. Their fear is evident in their eyes as they line up and stand at attention each time he frequently appears outside their door to choose one of them to respond to his sexual demands.
Direction by Liesl Tommy underscores the women’s resilience despite the sexual assaults. Helena is Wife #1, portrayed by Saycon Sengbloh. She displays a grudging acceptance of reality and shows motherly compassion for the youngest captured girl who falls into the general’s liar. The girl, played by Lupita Nyong’o, soon becomes Wife #4 but fails to show any dislike of her encounter with the older man. Nyong’o, who won an Academy Award for her portrayal in “12 Years a Slave,” is equally believable in her performance as the innocent, naive young victim and as the passionate young woman who later takes up a gun to fight in the war to escape the repeated rapes by the general.
Wife #2 is not present in their one-room shack and Helena refuses to talk about her. Despite Helena’s efforts to keep her unknown to the girl, Wife #2 shows up bearing gifts for the women. As Wife #2, Zainab Jah is fierce in spirit and violent in action as she glorifies her role as a gun-wielding soldier in the army, able to fight off the enemy and to stand up for herself. The girl breaks down and finally shares her revulsion for the general’s sexual violence. She then leaves with Wife #2 to fight in the army, trusting that she will not have to suffer any more sexual violence.
In an explosive scene between Wife # 2 and the girl, the girl tells a heart-rending tale of a young woman gang-raped by the soldiers because she had verbally disrespected the girl. As punishment for showing compassion for the victim, Wife #2 beats the girl into a hard-nosed acceptance of the realities of the war. Furthermore, Wife #2 tells the girl that at some point, she has to seek the protection of a high-ranking soldier by offering sexual favors. Repelled by this unexpected reality, the girl returns to the wives’ hut.
Akosua Busha enters the play as a “peace woman” seeking to recruit women to leave the battlefront and to work for peace with her organization. Eventually, Helena agrees to leave with her. Pascale Armand, as Wife #3, is pregnant, and later bearing the general’s baby, she refuses to leave.
How this drama ends does offer some hope for these women as the war draws to an end. Yet the director leaves a question mark in the eyes and stance of the girl who holds a machine gun in one hand and a book in the other in the final scene.
Scenic design by Clint Ramos is terribly depressing but is an appropriate backdrop for the desperate lives of these women. Fight directors Rick Sordelet and Christian Kelly-Sordelet provide realistic robust staging of fight scenes.
“Eclipsed” continues its run at the Public Theater through Nov. 29 and later moves to the Golden Theater on Broadway, where previews begin in February.