(Charles Isherwood’s article appeared in The New York Times, 3/6; via Pam Green.)
The women depicted in Danai Gurira’s soul-searing “Eclipsed,” which opened on Broadway at the Golden Theater on Sunday, have lost just about everything. Their dignity, their freedom, their families, their hope. Perhaps most disturbingly, they have lost their own names, or rather tried to forget them.
For all its harrowing power, “Eclipsed,” headlined by the Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o, one of the most radiant young actors to be seen on Broadway in recent seasons, shines with a compassion that makes us see beyond the suffering to the indomitable humanity of its characters. And although the events it depicts happened more than a decade ago, the play resonates powerfully today, as more than one African country continues to be plagued by atrocious violence, with women often the most brutalized victims. (Let us not forget the hundreds of schoolgirls kidnapped by the radical Islamist group Boko Haram in Nigeria who remain unaccounted for to this day.)