Proper Recompense for the "Ruined"

Good parts are hard to find for any actor. But you can start multiplying that by exponentials when it comes to black actresses. Even the August Wilson canon, a virtual jobs program for black actors over the last couple of decades, gives most of the great stuff to the guys (it may be Ma Rainey’s black bottom but it’s the volatile trumpeter Levee’s show).

So black actresses everywhere ought to sit down right now and write a thank you note to playwright Lynn Nottage for Ruined, her brave and affective new play about the sexual atrocities committed against women in the war-ravaged Congo that opened last night at the Manhattan Theatre Club’s Stage 1 space at City Center. Theater lovers should send thank you notes too. And here’s mine.

Ruined is one of those rare plays that has something important to say about the world we live in and the wisdom to say it in a way that will both engage and entertain. Plus it has four fantastic female parts.

And I’m not surprised. Intimate Apparel, her 2003 play about a lonely black seamstress at the turn of the last century, established Nottage as a playwright of true consequence. The New York Drama Critics Circle named it the best play of that season and it is my favorite new work of the past 10 years. But before her writing career took off, Nottage worked as the national press officer for the human rights group Amnesty International and when she decided to write this play, she traveled to Congo and interviewed women who have suffered through the devastation there. Ruined combines their stories with her artistry (click here to read a New York Times interview with Nottage about the genesis of the play).

Ruined is set in a brothel owned by Mama Nadi (an intentional homage to Brecht's Mother Courage) who brazenly attempts to profit from the war by catering to both sides of the conflict. As the play opens, she acquires two new girls, who will be mentored by one of her most successful workers. All three have come to Mama Nadi because they have been repeatedly raped by marauding soldiers, then rejected by their shamed families and now have nowhere else to go. One of them has been so badly abused that her insides have been damaged to the point that she is sexually ineffective or, as it is called, ruined (click hear to listen to an NPR report about efforts to help the real-life victims of such atrocities).

The subject is harrowing but Nottage and director Kate Whoriskey smartly add music, dance and even moments of humor that ease the tension without undermining it. The technical team—Scenic Designer Derek McLane, Costume Designer Paul Tazewell, Lighting Designer Peter Kaczorowski and Sound Designers Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen—creates a thoroughly believable environment for the action.

All four of the actresses have a chance to shine and each clearly relishes this chance to dazzle. The lovely Condola Rashad brings an ethereal quality to Sophie, the most damaged of the women. Cherise Boothe, captures the seething rage of Josephine, the brothel’s veteran. And Quincy Tyler Bernstine is devastating as Salima, the plain everywoman of the group. The male actors, particularly Russell Gebert Jones as the fixer who fantasizes about a relationship with Mama Nadi, lend able support.

But the play centers around Mama Nadi, her complex relationship with her girls and her struggle to avoid taking sides in the war. Saidah Arrika Ekulona does a fine job, particularly with the earth-mother aspects of the part, but Adriane Lenox, who won a Tony for her brief but unforgettable appearance as the mother in Doubt, was originally cast in the role and I kept imagining the flintiness she would have added to it.

A couple of other things bothered me too. The accents the actors assume seemed arbitrary and unnecessary; after all, actors playing Chekhov don’t fake Russian accents. The references to Mama Nadi’s large stable of girls were distracting since we only see three. And then there’s the ending. I think I get why Nottage chose it. I just wish she’d chosen differently. But these are nitpicks. This is a play you should see.

"You're Welcome America. A Final Night With George W Bush" is Funny But Far Too Polite

It probably wasn’t intentional but the Cort Theatre, home for the next five weeks to You’re Welcome America. A Final Night With George W Bush, comedian Will Ferrell’s genial send-up of the Bush presidency, is just half a block away from the headquarters of Fox News, perhaps the only place in Manhattan where people are actually lamenting the end of the Bush presidency.

I doubt you’ll find many Fox staffers in the Cort audience but there’s nothing really mean-spirited about the show, a reprise and extension of the sketches Ferrell did on “Saturday Night Live” before he left to star in such endearingly goofy movie comedies as “Elf,” “Anchorman” and “Blades of Glory.” In fact, Ferrell is such a likeable guy that I, who literally wept when Bush was re-elected in 2004, found myself thinking that maybe the man who is the worst president in the nation’s history may not have been all that bad.

Which bothers me a little and makes me wonder why we Americans, who so revere our freedom of expression, express so little political dissent in our theater. Are today’s playwrights just too unconcerned with the sad state of our current affairs? Are today’s producers just too reluctant to put on works that deal with them? Are today’s theatergoers just too uninterested in seeing shows like that? If it weren’t for the folks down at the Culture Project there would hardly be any serious examination of American politics on a New York stage.

The Brits, as anyone who has seen the “Merry Christmas, Maggie Thatcher” number in Billy Elliot (or seen any number of David Hare plays) knows, are less squeamish about taking on their leaders. And this week I read an article about how even Russian playwrights are going after the tsar-like Vladimir Putin (click here to read it). But when you look around at the plays scheduled to open on and off-Broadway this spring, nearly all deal with interpersonal relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children, old friends. Important stuff sure, but what about the financial crisis, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, global warming?

Ferrell and his longtime collaborator Adam McKay, who co-wrote and directed the show, do throw some barbs about Bush’s bungled response to Hurricane Katrina and mishandling of the Iraq war into their 90-minute show. But You’re Welcome America is mainly a revue of Bush bloopers—the endless malapropisms, the Mission Accomplished flight suit prematurely celebrating victory in Iraq, the attempted exit through a stuck door at a summit meeting in China—leavened with the comedians’ trademark loony humor. There are funny bits about Barbara Bush, Condi Rice and Dubya’s delight in bestowing silly nicknames as well as frat-boy jokes about penises, “fags” and pole dancing.

The audience the night my buddy Bill and I saw the show was filled with Ferrell lovers and Bush haters who lapped up all of it. The run is pretty much sold out but even if you can’t get a ticket, you can catch the show when HBO airs the final performance on March 14.

You’re Welcome America is funny and I had a good time. Unless you’re related to Dick Cheney you probably will too. But, in the end, I can’t help thinking about the mess the real George W. Bush has left us in. And that’s no laughing matter.