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(l-r) Celeste Jones, Regina Marie Williams and Bruce Young
Credit: Photo by Ann Marsden Ruined will break your heart, lift your soul
by Dwight Hobbes
Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder
Originally posted 10/27/2009


It’s great when a prestigious honor goes to a play that actually deserves it. With today’s penchant for the politically correct, valuing sentiment over skill, it is also rare. This makes Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Ruined a true find.

At Mixed Blood Theatre, Ruined receives a production every bit worthy of the splendid script. It stars local luminary Regina Marie Williams and television and film veteran Bruce A. Young, with Aimee K. Bryant leading a strong supporting cast. Aditi Kapil’s directing is flawless. In short, you couldn’t ask for a more rewarding night of theatre.

Set in the Congo amid today’s raging warfare, this is a saga of just how cruel a toll is taken on the humanity of women and girls when men decide to kill one another. Mama Nadi, a spirited, pragmatic soul, runs her modest but successful brothel, catering mainly to miners and soldiers with the only place for 50 miles around to stop in for a drink, have a bite to eat, and indulge in pleasures of the flesh.

She has seen and suffered through man’s inhumanity to woman, surviving by growing a hard veneer and a very sharp tongue. As Ruined unfolds and reveals, over the course of few days, the trials with which she and her girls contend, a portrait is drawn of the broken lives these women determinedly strive to salvage and of the strength to which they turn in the indomitable person of Mama Nadi.

It is masterfully crafted play, an experience that will both break your heart and lift your soul.

Regina Marie Williams shows why she is the leading lady of Twin Cities theatre. Her trademark of incredible range and depthless subtlety is wholly evident. You can follow Williams’ career through countless outings and never see her repeat herself.

Every time she takes on a character, she completely reinvents. As with the best of actors, there is not so much as a tick or gesture carried from, say, her breakthrough vehicle, Gus Edwards’ Louie & Ophelia (Penumbra Theatre), to her leap to area stardom in Dinah Was… (Penumbra Theatre), to this, her latest triumph. And she brings to Mama Nadi a richly complex, elementally forceful world of presence.

Bruce A. Young, who did Enough with Jennifer Lopez and has done nearly a hundred screen roles, is wonderful as Christian, an affable salesman who comes through, now and again, replenishing Mama’s stock of varied sundries of the working girl’s trade. In an understated, beautifully crafted turn, Young (who also did the fight choreography) brings to vibrant life this sensitive man stuck making a living in a hard, stark world.

Accomplished and gifted veteran Aimee K. Bryant gets a chance to show her range, too, as Salima, a tribal chief’s daughter who fell from favored status to disgrace when she committed the crime of being raped. Bryant gives Salima strong dimension.

Ericka Ratcliff is a delight as the saucy, snake-hipped Josephine. Josephine is a wry, calculating sort who takes life as it is and doesn’t make any bones about it until the prospect of latching onto a rich trick and being delivered into luxury turns her into a desperately dreamy-eyed rube. Ratcliff pulls the whole thing off with consummate skill.

Celeste Jones works well as the neophyte Sophie, a brutally deflowered maiden holding on to the hope that she can get to a doctor and repair the damage done to her by a gang-raping at the hands of soldiers. Also in the cast are Paul Meshejian, Irungu Mutu, Gavin Lawrence, Namir Smallwood, Payton Woodson and Eric Mayson.

Aditi Kapil turns in a fine directing job. She understands the power of this play and doesn’t get in its way. Smart directors know how to let a script breathe. Kapil is very, very smart.

Lynn Nottage (Intimate Apparel, Fabulation) is a playwright’s playwright. She doesn’t waste a word of dialogue, draws fully realized characters, and takes you through a true journey.

Ruined is not to be missed. You will thank yourself for buying a ticket and find yourself recommending to friends, family, pretty much anyone who’ll listen.

Lynn Nottage’s Ruined runs through Nov. 22 at Mixed Blood Theatre, 1501 South Fourth St. on the West Bank in Minneapolis. Tickets: $14 - $28. Box office: 612-338-6131.
Dwight Hobbes welcomes reader responses to dhobbes@spokesman-recorder.com.

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by Quinton Skinner October 28, 2009

Theater critic Quinton Skinner weighs in on Mixed Blood's new production, Lynn Nottage's "Ruined", directed by Aditi Kapil. He calls it a "play of startling intelligence and acuity," a powerful story of survival in extremity.
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"Ruined" written by Lynn Nottage, directed by Aditi Kapil
On stage at the Mixed Blood Theatre in Minneapolis through November 22.

HOWEVER FAR-FLUNG OUR ADVENTURES INTO THE ETHEREAL REALMS of idea and spirit, we never entirely escape the conditions of our physical incarnation: legs, arms, senses, permeability, strength and weakness, sex. This is, after all, where we live, the source of pain and pleasure, fear and transcendence.

Lynn Nottage's Ruined is a play of startling intelligence and acuity; at its heart, this is an unflinching story of survival in extremity. The play's cognitive power lies in its exploration of the boundaries of force and harm, telling a story of the basest motivations--and what possible amelioration can be found by way of response.

The action takes place in the Congolese rainforest, where Mama Nadi (Regina Marie Williams) runs a full-service outpost. With the country wracked by interminable civil war, Mama Nadi's is an oasis in which miners, soldiers, and traders can procure food, drink, and access to young prostitutes.

Our moral compass spins from the opening scene, with the arrival of Christian (Bruce A. Young), a regular guest from the city who plies Mama Nadi with lipstick in exchange for cold Fanta orange soda (and who, it is increasingly clear, is smitten with her). As the scene unfolds, it becomes apparent that he also has a history of bringing girls to work there; this time, Christian arrives with Salima (Aimee Bryant) and Sophie (Celeste Jones) in tow.

Jones's Sophie is furtive and painfully shy, which Christian proceeds to inform Mama is the result of the girl being "ruined": that is, so severely sexually abused as to be permanently disfigured. Salima, who in this scenario endured a lesser trial, was sexually enslaved by soldiers over a period of months and subsequently shunned by her husband and family upon return to her village.

Mama Nadi takes in the girls, reluctantly, and for a time the rhythm of the story falls into that of commerce. Nottage makes a conscious nod to Brecht's Mother Courage, and Williams is convincing as a self-possessed scrapper with her own, idiosyncratic ethics (not least when Mama Nadi proclaims, "I put food in the mouths of eight women."). Aditi Kapil's direction accommodates well-wrought scenes in which action is taking place all over the stage at once -- small vignettes of exploitation and desperate pleasure-seeking.

In time, though, this tenuous peace cannot hold. Mama Nadi's homely sanctuary, self-consciously forged as a bulwark against chaos and the tides of brutality, succumbs to the forces at work outside its walls. The nation's civil war encroaches closer and closer, with soldiers from varying factions appearing, one after the other, all sides convinced of their righteousness -- and all thoroughly prepared to commit acts of objective evil in order to prevail.

One faction is helmed by a rebel leader called Kisembe (Gavin Lawrence), whose forces stalk, and are stalked, by those of Osembenga (Irungu Mutu). When each takes a break from the war, they appear separately with their cohorts at Mama Nadi's with attitudes of cocksure aggression and barely stifled violence. Each progressive scene grows more fraught, and Williams, from time to time, lets her character's façade slip for just a moment; she lets us see how much effort it takes Mama Nadi to balance the demands of each side and to maintain her neutrality.

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"The mess is outside," Mama Nadi announces at one point, though by then her proclamation amounts to wishful thinking. The air is redolent with malice and murder, and even old hands are getting out of Dodge.
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Tom Barrett's scenic design puts the main room of Mama Nadi's at the forefront, while a cutaway sector depicts the cramped, Spartan private space that the young women share. Katharine Horowitz's sound work juggles ambient rainfall with bursts of radio noise and stretches of live music (the recalcitrant Sophie becoming the place's chanteuse), in a sonic palate that enhances the show without imposing distraction.

Distraction, though, is the order of the day as events heighten. Christian takes his first drink in years at virtual gunpoint, and promptly goes into a state of emotional collapse. The cool, icy prostitute Josephine (Ericka Ratcliff) has a compressed breakdown of her own while ostensibly dancing for joy. Salima's husband, Fortune (Namir Smallwood), makes an ill-timed appearance at Mama Nadi's, a soldier looking for his wife; when she rejects him, he stands alone in the night, staring into the middle distance, a world of hidden thoughts churning turbulently within.

"The mess is outside," Mama Nadi announces at one point, though by then her proclamation amounts to wishful thinking. Instead, the air is redolent with malice and murder, and even old hands, such as mineral trader Mr. Harari (Paul Meshejian), are getting out of Dodge. When death does indeed make an appearance, it naturally strikes one of the most vulnerable characters. Although Nottage makes a forgivable misstep in lending Salima a line toward the end that crosses the border from the suggestive to the didactic, the heartbreaking events arrive with an air of inevitability.

And then, this wrenching narrative turns on its heels and becomes, in appropriately understated fashion, a love story of sorts. The waters are too deep here, and so muddied with blood, for there to be anything as pat as redemption for these characters. But Williams and Young, after sparring all night, infuse light into the gloom with a shared moment of transcendence. Mama Nadi, for all her complexity and unapologetic ruthlessness, allows the slightest hint at what lies beneath her stony veneer. It's a hard-won moment, and it works.

Mixed Blood has crafted a satisfying, harshly elegant work here, discomfiting from the start but constantly engaging. The realm of Ruined feels like the space in which imagination is of no use, where dreams are an unthinkable luxury. The reality is, there are lives stained by such violence, exploitation, and atrocity. Ruined offers no answers for why this is so, but it lends real dignity and insight into the very notion of surviving the unspeakable.

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Performance details:

Ruined, written by Lynn Nottage and directed by Aditi Kapil, will be at the Mixed Blood Theatre in Minneapolis through November 22. Visit the theater's website for ticket details, show times, and additional background on the play.

Sexy Buttery Blues

"Bud, Not Buddy" matures and shines at Children's Theatre Company.

By ROHAN PRESTON, Star Tribune

Last update: January 23, 2008 - 10:05 PM
BUD, NOT BUDDY
What: Adapted by Reginald Andre Jackson from Christopher Paul Curtis' novel. Directed by Marion McClinton.

When: 7 p.m. today, 7:30 p.m. Fri., 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sat., 2 and 5 p.m. Sun. Ends Feb. 16.

Where: Children's Theatre, 2400 3rd Av. S., Mpls.

Tickets: $22.50-$37.50. 612-874-0400.

In "Bud, Not Buddy," which opened over the weekend at the Children's Theatre Company, the first act offers a lot of perfunctory exposition. It dawdles a bit in setting up the plot and establishing the play's flashback storytelling style.

But the second act, in which the hopes and dreams of a searching 10-year-old orphan meet the realities of the world, is simply sublime. Poignant and elegant, it made my eyes misty.

Adapted by Reginald Andre Jackson from Christopher Paul Curtis' Newberry-winning book, "Bud" is about a boy in an orphanage, played by Nathan Barlow, who runs away to find his father.

The father may or may not be famous bandleader Herman Calloway (Shawn Hamilton as a hurt and truculent taskmaster). When Bud finds Mr. Calloway, he is not received like he thought he would be. But wise and indefatigable, the young man with the potential to flower perseveres.

The play takes place during the Depression, not today, when Bud's search would be a TV special.

Staged with style and sophistication by Marion McClinton, "Bud" is ostensibly a show for children. Children's Theatre recommends it for ages 9 and up. But McClinton has directed a fierce work with some swinging jazz composed by Victor Zupanc -- not the bright musical underscoring that you might expect for youngsters. In other words, this production, which uses real-looking weapons, does not do too much nodding to children.

The performances, by a very capable company whose members play multiple parts, are all admirable. Barlow, a Children's Theatre veteran, is clearly in a growth spurt and his voice is changing (getting lower). Still, he invests Bud with verve and hard-fought hope.

"Bud" features a lovely turn by Regina Williams as the warm, sensitive singer in Calloway's band. In voice and body, Williams' radiant character wraps the orphan boy in warmth and love. Hamilton is deft and in the pocket as the leader of the jazz band. He moves with stylized syncopation as if he is walking on music. Kevin West, Payton Woodson and the always stellar Marvette Knight join Gerald Drake, Samuel Roberson, Traci Allen, Namir Smallwood and Max Tojtanowicz in this lyrical production that is as apt for adults as it is for children.

It might be at Children's Theatre, but adults could ditch the kids and go to this one for themselves. It's a thought.

Rohan Preston • 612-673-4390

Spirit of Holiday channeled at Stackner
Intense internal energy fuels Williams' organic performance
By DAMIEN JAQUES
Journal Sentinel theater critic
Posted: March 19, 2007

Mesmerizing is a word critics should use very judiciously. It's a term that carries big expectations and responsibilities.
''Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill'

Regina Marie Williams uses nuance and exquisitely subtle shadings to portray jazz singer Billie Holiday in the Milwaukee Repertory Theater's production of "Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill."
If You Go
What: "Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill"
When: Through May 13.
Where: The Stackner Cabaret at the Baker Theater Complex, 108 E. Wells St. Tickets are on sale at the Milwaukee Rep's box office in the complex's lobby, by phone at (414) 224-9490, and online at www.milwaukee
rep.com

But I can't think of a better way to describe Regina Marie Williams' performance in "Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill," the new show the Milwaukee Repertory Theater opened in its Stackner Cabaret over the weekend. Williams plays the late jazz singer Billie Holiday in Lanie Robertson's well-written theater piece, a monologue-concert hybrid.

Actually, Williams channels the troubled singer to a degree that few performances attain. She toys with something that seems beyond acting. It's more visceral, organic and almost ghostly.

No wonder the lone act flies by as if time is standing still.

Playwright Robertson used the conceit of placing "Lady Day" in a Philadelphia jazz club near the end of Holiday's short life. She died in 1959 at the age of 44.

Billie is out of prison and has a new boyfriend-piano accompanist. She is on stage at the intimate Emerson's Bar & Grill to entertain the smattering of fans and jazz aficionados who have shown up.

Holiday sings 17 songs, and between numbers rambles on, talking about her life. The star was a poster child for the crushing price of racial bigotry exacerbated by bad personal choices.

She was raped at 10, then handed over by her mother to a brothel madam as a teenager. He first husband introduced her to heroin, begging her to sample it as a sign of her love for him. Billie had a knack for being attracted to the wrong men.

Holiday's career was short-circuited by the double whammy of prejudice and her frequent conflicts with the law. The best jazz songs were often restricted to white singers to record, and Billie talks about the indignities suffered by black touring performers in the first half of the 20th century.

The club appearance we are witnessing is lubricated by the constant sipping of alcohol as Holiday sings and talks. Her stability gradually slips away.
A different route

Most singer-actresses portray an increasingly inebriated Billie sloshing through her final songs. With her intense internal energy, Williams takes a different route.

She exudes the instability using nuance and exquisitely subtle shadings. That makes the character's descent more harrowing.

Williams also underplays her performance of "Strange Fruit," Holiday's signature song about lynching. Broadway composer E.Y. (Yip) Harburg called the number a "historic document." In Williams' interpretation, she sings "Strange Fruit" without a great deal of drama but with impeccable clarity, demonstrating that less can be more.

The singer-actress employs a remarkably expressive face and physicality to suggest a compelling presence despite faded glamour and an erratic spirit. Vocally, Williams has a distinctive style that offers a velvet purr sometimes punctuated with a hint of spunky squawk.

Pianist William Knowles ably handles the keyboard and the few lines of dialogue he has with Williams.

CONSTANT STAR SHINES

REGINA is...