Though Broadway’s “Eclipsed” and “Blackbird” are worlds apart in many ways, they both fearlessly deal with the same subje✱ct — the sexual exploitation of young 𒁏women.
Admittedly those are grim plays, but these new productions are absolutely g🎃ripping. In fact, had Michelle Williams made her Broadway debut in “Blackbird” instead of “Cabaret,” she’d have been hailed as a major new stage star, because what she pulls off in David Harrower’s 2005 drama is shattering.
In “Blackbird” (at the Belasco Theatre through June 12), Williams is Una, who meets up withꦿ Ray (Jeff Daniels), with whom she had sex 15 years earlier. Ray spent three of those years in prison — Una was 12 to his 40 back then, and he was caught.
Now she’s appeared at his office, where he’s working under a new name, for a reckoning. Their encounter takes unexpected turns and the language is disturbingly frank. By play’s end, 80 minutes later, both actors look drained. You’ll ✱be shocked, yet strangely elated — the sign of powerful theater.
In “Eclipsed” (at the John Golden Theatre through June 19), Lupita Nyong’o plays a 15-year-old who becomes the latest of a Liberian leader’s war brides. Stripped of freedom and even their names, the women in Danai Gurira’s play struggle for survival. So🌺me stick together in the compound, while one crosses over and💮 becomes a soldier.
As intense as the show is, it’s also leavened by raucous humor — a running joke about Bill Clinton keeps getting better and better. In the end🦂, hope wins out over despair.
If this is what happens when Broadway tells 🗹the stories of women, we can only w𝓀ish for more.