For a moment, the audience can only listen. “Eclipsed,” Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company’s latest production, begins in the dark. Female voices and the rustling of trees narrate the blackness. When the lights finally come on, they illuminate two women arguing as they do their hair. Their daily banter belies the preceding moment of disquietude.
Set in a rebel army camp in Liberia, “Eclipsed” tells the story of five women trying to build their lives amid the country’s prolific civil war. Playwright Danai Gurira uses the lives of these women as both her focal point and as the window through which she meditates on the war. As a result, the play is relevant, but wrestles most acutely with the complexities of female relationships.
Helena, Bessie and Girl are known throughout the play as wives one, three and four. They are the wives of an army officer known simply as C.O., a man who shapes their day-to-day lives with an iron fist, but who never appears on stage. Revolving around the sexual and quotidian needs of the C.O., their lives are painful but predictable.
Wife number two, referenced succinctly as “not here right now,” had run off to become a rebel fighter. She returns, coupled with the arrival of a female peace activist committed to stopping the war. Bearing the nom de guerre of “Disgruntled” and wearing a machine gun strapped around her tube top, wife number two makes the women of the camp re-examine their lives. They must consider life outside of the rebel camp and the needs of the C.O.
Gurira, born and raised in Zimbabwe before moving to the U.S., traveled to Liberia to research before writing “Eclipsed.” She writes with honesty and understanding. The play’s dialogue, performed with a thick, Liberian accent, is authentic and moving. There is a natural rhythm to the language that gives the play its beautiful musicality and momentum.
Reflective of its staging, “Eclipsed” forges a distinction between the personal and the public. The women’s metal barracks, pushed to the forefront of the stage, fade sharply into the rest of the rebel camp. However, as the war grows increasingly pervasive with the return of wife number two, the women explore parts of the stage beyond the reaches of the compound. A powerful scene in the second act begins with wife number four holding a machine gun atop the barracks as she realizes the painstaking reality of a life lived outside the compound.
Powerful performances from the show’s five actresses illuminate the humanity at the play’s core. Wrestling with the show’s challenging emotional range, the actresses convey the ways in which the women rely on one another.
“Eclipsed” is a thoughtful and thought-provoking work. From the costuming to the jarring use of music, no choice or detail feels rushed over. Woolly’s artistic team crafted an intelligent play that finds the poignant moments amid catastrophe.
The play runs through Sept. 27 at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Chinatown, with pay-what-you-can tickets available for Monday and Tuesday night performances. For more ticket information, visit www.woollymammoth.net.
You can reach this staff writer at thescene@theeagleonline.com.
