If ever a play defied a happy ending, Lynn Nottage's Ruined is it. And yet, Nottage suggests, the age of miracles hasn't passed. It may only be an isolated heavenly ray piercing a hellish world, but that it can happen at all is a cause for cautious celebration.
Nottage has created a variation on Mother Courage set in Africa's Congo, where an endless civil war is a fact of life to be negotiated through rather than despaired over. The Mother Courage in this case is Mama Nadi, who tries to maintain her brothel/tavern as a kind of rainforest Switzerland. Rebel soldiers are embraced one day, loyalists on another. Mama thinks of herself as a steely survivor, and no one is immune from her sharp tongue. But even as she puts desperate young women to work pleasuring men, she is also their protector from futures that are described in agonizing detail by those who didn't reach Mama soon enough.
Though characters do occasionally indulge in heavy oration, Ruined is largely a mood piece of comings and goings, slices of life, and the simple joys that can be extracted from seemingly mundane activities. The rambling world that Nottage created has been beautifully evoked in Berkeley Rep's Roda Theatre, from Clint Ramo's set that elaborately details Mama's patchwork establishment to a compelling ensemble of actors led by the fierce Tonye Patano as Mama. Director Liesl Tommy's production is a joint effort with the Huntington Theatre Company and La Jolla Playhouse, where it played before arriving in Berkeley.
Ruined won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 2009, and finally gave high recognition to a playwright who has been working her way up the regional-theater circuit. Nottage went to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to interview resident-victims of the civil wars, and notably those women, numbered at 200,000, who have suffered rape and genital mutilation as a tactic to demoralize the civilization. It also demonizes the victims in the eyes of their family and societies, which is the case with the character Sophie (delicately drawn by Carla Duren), who seeks refuge with Mama despite the fact that she has been "ruined" as far as intercourse is concerned.
Sophie does chores and also sings with the live band that periodically plays for Mama's patrons. There is more lovely work from Pascale Armand and Zaina Jah as two of the working girls, and from Oberon K.A. Adjepong as a sweet-talking but booze-hungry traveling salesman who sets up for himself the seemingly impossible task of wooing Mama. "Love is a poisonous word," Mama says, "and an unnecessary burden."
Nottage is not interested in the politics of the Congo conflict, and the warring sides seem interchangeable in both greed and brutality. It's the most vulnerable people caught in a crossfire more heinous than bullets that the playwright wants to highlight. As Mama says in her key to emotional survival, "There must always be a part of you that the war doesn't touch."
Ruined will run at Berkeley Rep through April 10. Tickets are $34-$73. Call (510)647-2949 or go to www.berkeleyrep.org.