I’ve previously teased the possibility of Lupita Nyong’o and Danai Gurira working together on the same project, but I didn’t expect it to happen on stage (this is a film blog after all).
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Nyong’o’s character changes the balance of the play when she’s introduced to a tense situation – the chaos of the Liberian Civil War.
Now that Lupita Nyong’o can cross “star in a blockbuster franchise” off the list with her role in the upcoming Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the Oscar victor is opting for something more low-key.
The off-Broadway production, which marks the play’s New York premiere, casts Nyong’o as “The Girl”, whose arrival jars a community formed by the captive wives of a rebel officer.
Public Theatre’s artistic director, Oskar Eustis, said it was a “brilliant play, ripped from the headlines, that looks at the awful conflicts in post-colonial Africa”.
A graduate of the Yale School of Drama, Nyongo’s stage credits include playing Perdita in “The Winter’s Tale” and Sonya in “Uncle Vanya” both at Yale Repertory Theater.
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The limited engagement will run through November 8. “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”. As an actress, she is now featured as Michonne on AMC’s “The Walking Dead”.
