Lynn Nottage’s Ruined, winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, is that rare thing among American plays, an intelligent and passionate examination of personal and political life in a foreign country, in this case the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The many characters Nottage puts on the stage, from bar-and-brothelkeeper Mama Nadi to prostitute Josephine to army commander Osembenga, are motivated not by the usual family troubles or search for authenticity but by brutal civil war, rampant misogyny, desperation to survive and terrible memories of horrific violence. In the brilliantly acted and directed production currently playing at Sarasota’s Florida Studio Theatre, Nottage’s vision of a nation in extremis is rendered with an astonishing and sometimes frightening verisimilitude.
Surely this is How It Is: normal men and women turned into killers and rapists, exploiters and exploited, the walking wounded and the walking dead. Nottage is so successful at presenting the horrors of this state of affairs, in fact, that a couple of more pleasant notes in the play’s second act ring false. But these moments are few; for the most part Nottage gives us a vision of hell, and what it’s like to subsist on sulfur and brimstone. It’s damned hard, is the answer, and it takes courage, shrewdness, vast willpower, and a lot of luck. More than a lot, if you have the bad luck to be a woman.
This article appears in Feb 24 – Mar 2, 2010.