Eclipsed
Opening Night: March 6, 2016
Closing: June 19, 2016
Theater: John Golden Theatre
Amid the chaos of the Liberian Civil War, the captive wives of a rebel officer band together to form a fragile community—until the balance of their lives is upset by the arrival of a new girl. Drawing on reserves of wit and compassion, “Eclipsed” reveals distinct women who must discover their own means of survival in this deeply felt portrait of women finding and testing their own strength in a hostile world of horrors not of their own making.
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March 6, 2016
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. Caught up in the brutal violence of Liberian civil war, held captive as “wives,” really sexual slaves, of a rebel commanding officer, they prefer to refer to one another anonymously — as Number One or Number Three — as if their lives before the horror descended upon them never happened. It’s more painful to remember than to forget. 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.
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March 6, 2016
A few things worth noting about “Eclipsed,” which opened tonight at New York’s Golden Theatre: It marks the Broadway debuts of both Lupita Nyong’o and Danai Gurira. Nyong’o is a stage-trained actor who won an Oscar for her performance in “12 Years A Slave” and currently is part of the “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” phenom. Gurira also is an actress — plays Michonne on AMC’s “The Walking Dead” — who currently has two plays running in New York, this and “Familiar” which opened last week at off-Broadway’s Playwrights Horizons. And “Eclipsed” is the third transfer from the Public Theater, following the musicals “Fun Home” and “Hamilton,” to run concurrently on Broadway — a championship season for Oskar Eustis in his tenth season as artistic director. Most important, “Eclipsed” is a major achievement — a scorching work about women and war whose humor burnishes rather than undermines its seriousness of purpose.
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March 6, 2016
The front cover of the Playbill for the Broadway production of “Eclipsed,” which opened tonight, features the beautiful face of its star, Lupita Nyong’o, looking worried. The back cover, an ad for Lancôme, also features Nyong’o, smiling broadly. No doubt the back cover subsidized the front, because the chances of a play like “Eclipsed” getting to Broadway without a star of Nyongo’s current cachet are nil. Eclipsed is about Liberian women forced into sex slavery during that country’s mad civil war. And while it has moments of light-heartedness, and a wind-up that could conceivably be called hopeful (the war, after all, does end), most of the play, by Danai Gurira, is crushingly sad; what else could it be? So let us be grateful to “12 Years a Slave,” the Academy Awards, and Advanced Génifique Youth Activating Serum for allowing a moving and must-see production to move and be seen.
READ THE REVIEWMarch 6, 2016
Lupita Nyong’o is a red carpet darling, effortlessly stunning in a Calvin Klein gown or in advertisements as the face of Lancome. So it may come as something of a shock to see her make her Broadway debut in a cheap cloth skirt and filthy “Rugrats” T-shirt. Nyong’o loses herself utterly in the searing and stunning play “Eclipsed,” which opened Sunday at the Golden Theatre, also marking the important Broadway bows for playwright Danai Gurira and director Liesl Tommy. Oscar-winner Nyong’o (“12 Years A Slave”) plays a 15-year-old known only as The Girl who finds herself enslaved in a rebel compound during a bloody civil war in Africa. The five-member cast — all women — is a true ensemble and must not be missed.
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March 6, 2016
The back cover of the Playbill for “Eclipsed” shows Lupita Nyong’o, the Mexican-Kenyan actress who won an Oscar for “12 Years a Slave” and played Maz Kanata in the new “Star Wars” film, looking quite glamorous and beautiful in a full-page advertisement for Lancome Paris. Her physical appearance could not be more different in “Eclipsed,” Danai Gurira’s brutal and harrowing drama depicting African women struggling to survive during Liberia’s civil war in 2003, which has transferred to Broadway after a sold-out run at the Public Theater. Nyong’o (whose 15-year-old character has no name) first materializes from under a plastic tub in a squalid hovel, where she is being hidden by two “wives” (Pascale Armand and Saycon Sengbloh) of a rebel officer fighting the forces of the country’s president. They hope to protect the girl from being subjected to sexual slavery. Nevertheless, she is spotted, raped and named wife number four.
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