Dilemma for Wife Number Four as peace rocks the boat

Eclipsed rehearsal

Image by Helen Murray

Daniel Nelson

From the moment, “The Girl, fifteen” makes her surprise entrance, Eclipsed grabs your attention.

She’s about to become part of a group of privileged “wives” in a rebel army camp during the Liberian civil war. Privileged because they are “wives” one to four of a Commanding Officer. This means they are on sexual stand-by for one man only, unlike other captured women in the camp who can be “jumped on” by any fighter at any time.

Pecking order is strictly maintained by the women as they manoeuvre for survival in a bare battle-scarred room in a rough and ready encampment in a brutal war.

Wife Number One rules the roost by dint of seniority but has been sexually replaced by the younger, prettier Wife Number Three, now pregnant, and she in turn is cast aside for the youngest arrival. Wife Number Two escapes sexual and domestic slavery by becoming a soldier. But the price is high (“She devil, she do bad tings”, says Wife Number One, Helena, who maintains a morality and amidst the chaos), and it becomes clear that though her freedom comes from the barrel of a gun it is partial and still dependent on her hooking up with a high-ranking soldier (“He got many women, but I his favourite dough. He give me de most tings when he come home from war.”)

One other character enters the harem,  but not to stay: Rita, forties, upper class, well-educated, a member of the peace-making Liberian Women’s Initiative. Her arrival creates a ripple in the domestic pot, a confrontation, and finally a dilemma for all of the others.

The set-up, like the war, is brutal – above all the women’s total subservience to men’s desires: they are repeatedly and arbitrarily required to drop whatever they are doing and line up to hear which of them has been summonsed by the unseen. But Zimbabwean-American writer Danai Gurira doesn’t preach about their plight: this is the situation the women are in, so how will they deal with it? 

A series of short, fast-moving scenes use drama, tension and humour – “It’s important to find a moment of humour, and it is a tactic of survival for them,” she has said, and there’s a great running gag about their interpretation of Bill Clinto’s biography. The truncated name comes from a tear in a book which Wife Number Four reads to them.

Gurira’s words are brought to vociferous, argumentative, passionate, exuberant life by the five-strong cast who relish and rip into their roles like a rocket

As the Gate's artistic director, Chris Haydon, told OneWorld: “These women … have magnificent energy on stage and you just want to spend time with these characters. There’s one character whose values are shocking, but she still has this incredible energy, and that’s why it’s such an exciting to play to watch … five absolutely brilliant actors giving life to these absolutely brilliant characters.”

This is a bravura piece of work.

•    Eclipsed is at the Gate Theatre, 11 Pembridge Road, London W11 3HQ, until 19 May. Info: 7229 0706

•    Bill Clinto and the Liberian rebel commander’s wives

*    Eclipsed debate with Human Rights Watch