What purpose does theatre serve? It’s a timeless question with a multiplicity of answers: theatre might aim to entertain, to inform, to persuade, even to provoke. When asked for my opinion, I tend to quote the actor Mark Strong, who once said in an interview that he hopes his audience goes “out into the night thinking about what they’ve seen, about those relationships [between the characters], about why it happened, how it happened, who was right, who was wrong, and consequently how they feel about themselves.” 
Nowhere is this philosophy better illuminated on the boards today than in Eclipsed, now running through June 19 at the Golden Theatre. Written by Danai Gurira, directed by Liesl Tommy, and starring a cohort of several tremendously gifted actresses, Eclipsed is already making history as the first production on Broadway with a cast and creative team composed entirely of black women. But the show is extraordinary in other ways, too: how it breathes life and sincerity into some of the most complex female characters we’ve ever seen on Broadway, how their struggles live in both the realm of the highly specific and the realm of the universal, how the very act of making a choice can be revolutionary.
Eclipsed is a searing account of five women living in Liberia in 2003, shortly before the end of the Second Liberian Civil War, as they strive to retain agency in the face of unimaginable degradation. Three of the women (played by Saycon Sengbloh, Pascale Armand, and Lupita Nyong’o) are captives of the Commanding Officer of a local rebel faction, forced to cohabitate in a tiny, dilapidated shack. Though they’re called the C.O,’s “wives,” with rankings assigned in order of their longevity in the camp, “sex slave” is a far more appropriate term; these three women are routinely called offstage for sex with the C.O., returning after a short beat to wipe themselves clean and then continue with their daily routine, as if their trauma has rendered them totally desensitized. Zainab Jah plays a former “wife” of the C.O. turned guerilla soldier who convinces Nyong’o to join her campaign, and Akosua Busia appears late in the first act as a representative of a women’s peace initiative who urges the “wives” to escape and seek refuge from the fighting. Together, these women’s stories coalesce to form a narrative about the horrors women face in wartime and the scant recourse available to them.
This production is impeccably crafted, from Tommy’s cogent, intuitive direction to Clint Ramos’ expressive set, Broken Chord’s entrancing incidental music, and Jen Schriever’s lighting that artfully mimics the passage of the sun across the horizon. The performances are nothing short of miraculous, too, especially Zainab Jah, whose veneer of raucous insouciance ultimately collapses into a wellspring of rage and desperation, and Lupita Nyong’o, whose performance as a fifteen-year-old girl is breathtakingly raw and unaffected.
Despite the irrepressible misery central to this story, Eclipsed is not suffering for suffering’s sake, nor it is a voyeuristic opportunity for American audiences to revel in their privilege and pity the hopelessly oppressed Other. These women suffer, yes, but they remain strong and active throughout; they find humor in their plight, forge intimate relationships with each other, educate themselves, and reassert their subjectivity. Trapped between a rock and a hard place, they find choices to make where none exist and fiercely cling to survival even when it seems impossible. The final scene ends on an ambiguous note, where the choice itself becomes the thematic linchpin of the show: how do we make a choice when its consequences are unfathomable?
Though the lives of Eclipsed’s audience members will probably never come close to echoing those of its characters, we can all understand—on levels both intellectual and emotional—the uncharted territories we must navigate to preserve our autonomy and personhood in the face of injustice. The journey undertaken by these exceptional women is long and hard, but it’s one you certainly won’t want to miss.
Live, Love, Learn,
Olivia & The Write Teacher(s)