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Reviews
"SUPERB! Huntington brings Pulitzer-winning Ruined to jolting life! In a new production, director Liesl Tommy has drawn fully committed performances from the superb cast. As Salima, Pascale Armand turns in a powerful, heartbreaking performance." — The Boston Globe
"Powerful! Vibrant! Director Liesl Tommy keeps the action moving at a brisk pace, assisted greatly by a talented cast, vibrant choreography, and authentic, percussion-heavy Central African music. Tonye Patano is a wonder. She shines throughout, particularly in tender, humor-filled scenes with a great Oberon K.A. Adjepong." — Boston Herald
"Powerful Ruined stands tall in a vibrant Boston premiere! Nottage's writing sings!" — The Boston Phoenix
"UPLIFTING PERFORMANCES! Lynn Nottage has hit her target. Ruined flies!" — Tab/Community News
"Powerfully emotional! Every performance is vividly alive, and Tonye Patano is extraordinary. Do not miss Ruined!" — Joyce Kulhawik
"The [La Jolla Playhouse/Huntington Theatre Company/Berkeley Rep] production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama gives full force to Nottage's tale. Ruined is a propulsive, engrossing story, and director Liesl Tommy's music-laced staging teases out the piece's redemptive spirit, its defiant flashes of humor, and its surprising sense of romance among the ruins. In the show's most searing moments, the impact is unmistakable.
"The potent Tonye Patano (a star of TV's Weeds) gives Mama a gloss of warm hospitality that quickly can turn bristling and officious — long-festering defenses against the pain she's seen. As Josephine, Zainab Jah conveys oceans of rage through her chillingly dead expression; Pascal Armand has one of the play's most quietly arresting moments as Salima, and Carla Duren sings with haunting beauty as the delicate but unbowed Sophie." — San Diego Union-Tribune
"A brilliant staging of an important, relevant play. Theatre-lovers could hardly ask for more." — North County Times
"Ruined is the play to see this season! Director Liesl Tommy's staging is excellent, and the performances are terrific across the board. Ruined is the best play I've seen this year." — Angela Carone, NPR
Features
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From BU Today, Jan. 18, 2011: "In 2004 playwright Lynn Nottage traveled to the war-ravaged Democratic Republic of the Congo to hear the stories of some of the tens of thousands of women brutalized in the longest, deadliest civil conflict in modern times . . . "
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From The Boston Globe, Jan. 2, 2011: "Nelson Mandela was a prisoner, not a president, when Liesl Tommy and her family emigrated from South Africa to the United States in the mid-1980s . . . "
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From North County Times, Nov. 18, 2010: "When playwright Lynn Nottage flew to East Africa in 2004 to do research for a play, her original plan was to adapt flertolt Brecht's anti-war drama Mother Courage into a new play about the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo . . . "
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From San Diego Union-Tribune, Nov. 14, 2010: "Battles of all kinds — tests of wills, clashes of conscience, private fights to salvage a shred of dignity — erupt in Ruined, Lynn Nottage's Pulitzer Prize-winning play about the chaos visited upon lives in Central Africa . . . "
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From La Jolla Light, Nov. 11, 2010: "With stories of war-torn countries and savage atrocities broadcast daily by the media, it's courageous when a playwright tackles those same subjects. Lynn Nottage won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize and many other awards for her war drama Ruined . . . "
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From The Rage Monthly, Nov. 2010: "Ruined co-star Carla Duren opened up to The Rage Monthly about how the show is changing hearts and minds, her role as Sophie, and her hometown roots . . . "
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