Following her Oscar win in “12 Years A Slave,” Lupita Nyong’o is slated to appear in the latest installment of George Lucas’s “Star Wars” franchise later this year. But the accomplished 32-year-old beauty is putting her star power to best use in Danai Gurira’s “Eclipsed,” which is currently in a sold-out engagement at the Public Theater. The rave reviews which greeted its opening there led to speculation, ultimately correct, that the play might transfer to Broadway. And critics pointed out that the shocking drama, about sexually abused women caught up in the Second Liberian Civil War, was, despite the appearance of Nyong’o, very much an ensemble piece, which also featured powerful performances from Pascale Armand, Zainab Jah, Saycon Sengbloh, and Akosua Busia.However, Nyong’o’s presence in the cast achieved for “Eclipsed” what the rave reviews and Pulitzer Prize could not for another play, namely Lynn Nottage’s “Ruined.” When that 2009 drama premiered off-Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club, its many supporters hoped that Broadway would be an ultimate destination. However the subject matter — the terrors of war unleashed in a Congolese whorehouse run by a Mother Courage-like figure — was deemed too risky for the commercial marketplace.Not so with “Eclipsed,” thanks in large part to the involvement of Nyong’o, who plays a 15-year-old orphan who becomes a pawn in a pitched battle between two of the four women who constitute the captive and abused harem of a rebel commander. (One of those battling for the soul of the newcomer has escaped the harem by strapping on a machine gun and joining a rebel unit.) Gurira, herself an actor best known as Michonne in the television series “The Walking Dead,” broke through as a playwright with “In the Continuum,” a 2005 play about two women — a Zimbabwean newsreader and a Los Angeles store clerk — dealing respectively with AIDS. She wrote “Eclipsed” in 2009 and it premiered at Yale Rep under the direction of Liesl Tommy, who has also directed the Public production. Gurira is the daughter of émigrés from Zimbabwe while Nyong’o was born in Mexico of Kenyan parents of the Luo tribe, the same ethnic group of which Barack Obama, Sr. is a member. The actress spent some time in Kenya although political unrest forced the family to leave the country.Now, thanks to Nyong’o’s growing celebrity, the tragic events of Africa’s brutal civil wars will be part of the 2015-2016 Broadway season. Following its sold-out run at the Public on November 29, “Eclipsed” will begin previews on February 23 prior to a March 6 opening at the Golden Theatre.
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