We at Show Showdown seem to be in a Public Theater frenzy right now, but their season has just begun, it's very promising thus far, and I love the Public something fierce, so I'm happy to keep spreading the love. Especially since I just saw
Eclipsed, Danai Gurira's moving, informative, brilliantly feminist play, in the appropriately intimate LuEsther Hall.
Eclipsed was superbly acted by a cast of five women under the skillful direction of Liesl Tommy. I am glad to have seen it and haven't stopped thinking about it since I did.
War-is-hell stories tend to focus on men: men going to war, men bonding and dying in war, men returning home broken from war. But
Eclipsed, which tells its story unflinchingly and without condescension, emotional sog, or melodrama, examines women's roles in wartime. The play takes place during the second of back-to-back civils war in Liberia (the first began in 1989 and lasted through 1996; the second started in '99 and lasted until 2003).
