Review: A brothel filled with sad stories

As her impassive, guilt-racked soldier-husband, Fortune, stands outside a brothel for a second day in the rain, waiting to take her back, traumatized Salima confides her story to Sophie, another living war casualty now working at the same whorehouse in the rain forests of Congo.

Salima was assaulted by several men after her husband left her unprotected at home when he went to buy a cooking pot. The shame that the attack brought on her family meant that she had to flee the village. Now pregnant by either her rapists or any of the combatants or mud-caked miners who patronize Mama Nadi's house, Salima must decide whether to keep the child she describes as sired by a monster, or take drastic action that could endanger her life.

The women of Mama Nadi's house all bear such harrowing stories in "Ruined," Lynn Nottage's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama that is making its gut-wrenching regional premiere at Mixed Blood Theatre. Some have scars on their heavily trafficked bodies. Some have wounds in their voices. All have holes in their souls.

As played by an excellent cast led by Regina Marie Williams as Mama Nadi, Aimee K. Bryant as Salima and businessman Bruce A. Young as Mama Nadi's love interest, Christian, the production moves from strength to dramatic strength. Williams' Mama Nadi is more Mother Courage than madam. She enforces a ruthless ethic of business, which is a shield in a place of constantly shifting military fortunes. And Williams, who has a transporting command of the Congolese syntax and inflections, invests this character with wisdom, sass and a pragmatism that is not above groveling before a big man.

That the production is so compelling is a tribute to the script. Nottage has crafted a poetic play that grabs you by the neck or some parts lower, and holds you for the whole evening. The production boasts one of the strongest casts to grace a Twin Cities stage this year, even if there is a little clumsiness in Aditi Kapil's direction.

She has the combatants who patronize Mama Nadi's house sit carelessly with their backs to the front door. That, in a war zone, could be a fatal mistake, even if Mama Nadi makes all the men check their bullets at the bar.

Bryant imbues Salima with a tremulous vulnerability and a world of hurt. When she tells her story, you can feel the horror in the pit of your stomach. Celeste Jones is terrific as Sophie, who finds her dreams in romance novels. And Ericka Ratcliff is totally committed, like her castmates, as salty Josephine, Mama Nadi's right-hand woman.

The actors playing the fighters bring it home viscerally. Gavin Lawrence is frightening as a jacked-up military leader, Jerome Kissembe. Irungu Mutu's Cmdr. Osembenga is similarly menacing, even when he takes his shades off. And Namir Smallwood's Fortune is all burdened nervousness.

The only softened male character here, with a trickle of humanity, is Christian, a complicated character in whom Young invests warmth and understanding.

That the role of precious metals trader Mr. Hariri (Paul Meshejian) is so small is a pity. It is the blessing, and the curse, of Congo that this country the size of Western Europe has so many mineral riches, and so many songs of woe.

Rohan Preston • 612-673-4390