RUINED Reviews

Random question but are there any gunshots in the show?

Yes, there's a bit of gunfire.

It's a tremendous play.

WiCkEDrOcKS, you sound like Dorothy Parker in that review where she wrote about how she couldn't stand gunshots in plays.

Sorry for the threadjack, I just don't wanna start another thread about the show...but what is RUINED's rush policy? All the MTC site says is the following about a student rush program:

. Student tickets are $25 and will be on sale for all performances based on availability on the day of the performance, up to one hour before showtime.

So I'm assuming they go on sale when the box office is open and stop going on sale an hour before curtain...? One per ID? Any more info on this??

The Associated Press is VERY POSITIVE:

"Nottage, author of such accomplished and diverse works as "Intimate Apparel" and "Fabulation," walks a fine line here. She never allows the drama to veer into soap opera or sermonette. Her dialogue is direct, yet oddly poetic. She's helped by director Kate Whoriskey's vivid, music-driven production, first seen late last year at Chicago's Goodman Theatre.

Act 2 wanders a bit, and the play could use some trimming. But despite the horrors that snake through the lives of these women, Nottage's heroine doesn't end up in total desolation. In fact, there's a surprisingly upbeat if not exactly optimistic coda. It sends the audience out with a renewed faith in the ability of the human spirit to endure."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/02/10/entertainment/e161445S17.DTL

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I saw it in Chicago, and from what I remember, the gun shots were only heard in the distant. It wasn't loud at all.

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I love Lynn Nottage's play CRUMBLES FROM A TABLE OF JOY. I hope I can catch it at some point when I go to the city or that they mount a regional production where I live. She is a pretty neat playwright.

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The New York Times [with Ben Brantley] is VERY POSITIVE:

"Ms. Nottage, the wide-ranging and increasingly confident author of “Intimate Apparel” and “Fabulation or, the Re-Education of Undine,” hooks her audience with promises of a conventionally structured, purposefully plotted play, stocked with sympathetic characters and informative topical detail. She delivers on those promises.

Yet a raw and genuine agony pulses within and finally bursts through this sturdy framework, giving “Ruined” an impact that lingers beyond its well-shaped, sentimental ending. The play isn’t a form-shattering, soul-jolting shocker like Sarah Kane’s “Blasted,” another and more innovative study in wartime atrocities (which had its New York premiere at the Soho Rep last year), or an intellectual epic like “Mother Courage and Her Children.”

But precisely because of its artistic caution, “Ruined” is likely to reach audiences averse to more adventurous, confrontational theater. And people who might ordinarily look away from horror stories of distant wars may well find themselves bound in empathy to the unthinkably abused women that Ms. Nottage and the excellent actresses here have shaped with such care and warmth."

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2009/02/11/theater/reviews/11bran.html

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Updated On: 2/10/09 at 10:19 PM

Backstage is a RAVE:

"In director Kate Whoriskey's steely and moving production, each member of the stunning ensemble, in addition to the brilliant Ekulona, creates a heart-rending character who will stay with you long after the final blackout. Quincy Tyler Bernstine as Salima delivers a frighteningly detailed recollection of the morning she was abducted by a regiment for their pleasure. Condola Rashad as Sophie, the most damaged of Nadi's women, conveys every violation she has suffered in her painfully real physical life. Her sad smile as she warbles Dominic Kanza's music is devastating. As Christian, the intellectual merchant with a crush on Nadi, Russell Gebert Jones skillfully charts a spiraling journey downward as he succumbs to alcoholism and despair. Cherise Boothe is zestfully nasty as Josephine, the daughter of a former chief, who responds to her fall from grace with bitterness. Chiké Johnson, Chris Chalk, and Kevin Mambo also carve indelible portraits as soldiers and leaders in the mad war.

There are a few slips into familiar territory. Without giving away too much, I didn't quite buy Nadi's last-minute conversion to altruism nor the play's somewhat happy ending. But these minor flaws cannot ruin the magnificent Ruined."

http://www.backstage.com/bso/news_reviews/nyc/review_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003940281

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the only road block I see for "Runied" is that aren't the Pultizer's supposed to be awarded to a work about the American experience?

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No, you can't count on anything with the Pulitzer. Some plays that won are awful. These are the winners that have nothing to do with American life, Robert E. Sherwood's Idiots Delight (1936), Sherwood's There Shall Be No Night (1941), The Diary of Anne Frank (1955) and I Am My Own Wife. I would also include Teahouse of the August Moon.

The wording is "preferably original in its source and dealing with American life" but as stated earlier, exceptions have been made.

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