Theatre in Review: Eclipsed (Golden Theatre)/The Humans (Helen Hayes Theatre)Two of the season's finest Off Broadway productions have landed on Broadway with their considerable powers not only intact but, in some ways, heightened. Eclipsed remains a trip to the far side of the moon for most of us in its depiction of Liberian women who survive the chaos of civil war by acting as sex slaves to rebel soldiers. (The time is 2003, as the regime of Charles Taylor is about to fall.) A first viewing of Danai Gurira's play left one astonished at the brutal facts of the women's lives -- details they barely notice, so long have they lived with casual brutality. (Each of them, returning from offstage encounters with "the CO," as they call their keeper, lifts her skirt and wipes herself clean of his semen -- while conducting a casual conversation with the others.) A second viewing makes clear how skewed their worldview has become. For one thing, they all consider themselves privileged because they must service only one man; the really unlucky ones must handle entire regiments. Only one of them is literate, and she, barely so. And they exclusively refer to each other as #1, #2, and so on -- the moment, near the end, when each of them speaks her given name, involves a claiming of the self that has profound implications. There's an even more terrible choice facing The Girl (Lupita Nyong'o), who, having fled the destruction of her family, ends up the CO's new favorite. Still in a state of shock, she is drawn to Wife #2, who herself has joined the military, wielding a gun and commanding others. (The sight of Zainab Jah, who plays #2, in skinny jeans and a tank top with a Chanel logo, brandishing an automatic weapon, is not easily forgotten.) Even after The Girl joins up, taking on #2's hard-edged persona, she is told that she needs to find a commander to be "loving on" in order to guarantee her safety from rape. At the Public Theater, the actresses' thick accents were sometimes hard to understand, a problem that has been eliminated here. Also, the play's considerable humor has been emphasized: The Girl reads to the others from a biography of Bill Clinton, allowing them to provide hilarious running commentary on the Monica Lewinsky affair. Once again, under Liesl Tommy's direction, the cast provides stunningly committed performances, beginning with Nyong'o, whose character finds an outlet in homicidal fury for her own traumas. Equally good are Pascale Armand as #3, who is carrying the CO's child; Saycon Sengbloh as #1, the unofficial matriarch of the group; Jah, a fierce and frightening presence; and Akosua Busia as Rita, a member of a women's peace initiative, who brings to the others the vision of a life not marked by constant violence and sexual abuse. Clint Ramos' set, depicting the bullet-scarred ruin where the ladies sleep, makes a powerful comment of its own, as do his costumes, which consist of stray pieces that the CO and his men have collected from their victims. Jen Schriever's lighting uses bold color washes to suggest the heat of the African day; her stunningly saturated treatments on the upstage cyc go a long way toward establishing a strong sense of place. The members of the collective Broken Chord provide both original music and a series of sound effects that include radio broadcasts and a series of terrifying gun battles. For all its blunt force, Eclipsed is an imperfect work; the evolution of The Girl into a killing machine doesn't quite provide a strong enough dramatic motor and, at times, it comes across as a collection of scenes rather than a fully realized play. But time after time it leaves the audience gasping, and the final image, of The Girl, alone at the end of hostilities, holding both a book and a rifle, poses a question that will haunt you long after you leave the theatre. Equally haunting, for different reasons, is Stephen Karam's The Humans, which begins as the story of one family's Thanksgiving dinner and ends up a portrait of American society stuck in neutral. Reed Birney and Jayne Houdyshell are Erik and Deirdre, working-class Catholics from Scranton approaching retirement age but weighed down by debts and responsibilities, not least of which involves providing constant care for Momo, Erik's mother, who has slipped into senile dementia. Their daughters are caught in dead ends of their own: Brigid, a composer, is mired in academic debt and has few career prospects. Aimee has lost her female partner and struggles with ongoing colitis, which has cost her her job in a high-profile law firm; she is facing surgery that, she fears, will leave her permanently undesirable. As the family gathers in the duplex Chinatown apartment Brigid shares with Richard, her boyfriend -- a roomy, gloomy space with virtually no sunlight, which leaves Erik and Deirdre hilariously appalled -- there is considerable comedy in the conflict of generations. Deirdre constantly urges her children to cling to the Church, producing a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary as an unwelcome housewarming gift. "You put your faith in juice-cleansing or yoga, but you won't try church," Erik comments. (Interestingly, Erik and Deirdre are totally supportive of Aimee, urging her to find another girlfriend.) Deirdre, who is "back on the Weight Watchers," is less than thrilled when Brigid urges a "rainbow chard salad" on her at the dinner table. When Richard reveals his past emotional problems, Erik notes, a little smugly, "In our family, we don't have that kind of depression." Aimee cracks, "Yeah, no, we just have a lot of stoic sadness." Outside of Richard Nelson's Apple and Gabriel Family dramas, The Humans is the most realistic depiction of a loving, if fractious, family that you can hope to find, and Karam brilliantly orchestrates the combination of real affection and acid observation that keeps them together. But, as night falls, the electricity in the apartment starts to fail, the shadows gather, and a darker portrait emerges -- and not just because of the bombshell secret, revealed at the eleventh hour, that threatens to tear them apart. Erik and Deirdre have played by the rules all their lives, only to find themselves without financial security, burdened with caring for Momo, and faced with the loss of the vacation house that was their dream of retirement. Aimee and Brigid have aimed higher but their dreams have derailed. Aimee's predicament is especially acute, as revealed in a surreptitious, broken-hearted phone call to her ex. Richard, for all his personal problems, comes from a world of privilege that the others can only imagine; every time he opens his mouth, he accidentally sends Erik into a quiet rage. Just as August: Osage County took the temperature of inward-turning American society during the hapless final years of the Bush Administration, The Humans catches the bitter tone of the present moment, in which Americans on both ends of the political spectrum have concluded that the American dream is little more than a con job. Everyone is in a corner, unlikely to get out, forced to put aside his or her hopes just to make it through another day. Or, as Erik puts it, "Doncha think it should cost less to be alive?" If anything, The Humans plays better in the Helen Hayes Theatre -- its laughter more secure, its faint indications of the supernatural more effective. On second viewing, one notices how deftly Karam has woven a number of historic events into the family's history: Erik, who narrowly missed being in one of the Twin Towers on 9/11, is horrified to learn that Brigid and Richard's apartment occupies a hurricane flood zone. (The specter of Hurricane Sandy lurks behind many exchanges.) Erik's grandmother, an immigrant, barely survived an incident that sounds like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. For generations, it seems, this clan has been buffeted by history, and now they're beginning to wonder if there is anything more for them than mere survival. Once again, the director, Joe Mantello, orchestrates a superb ensemble, seamlessly shifting our attention around David Zinn's two-level set and moving from laughter to sadness to fury in thoroughly naturalistic fashion. Birney offers one of his finest performances (and that's saying something) as Erik, whose constant assurances that everything is fine belie deep reservoirs of guilt and anger. Houdyshell gets every one of her laughs as Deirdre, who, underneath, deeply resents being made a figure of fun. Cassie Beck is deeply affecting as Aimee, who is facing too many cruel twists of fate at once. As Brigid, Sarah Steele graduates from snarky teenager roles, creating a bright and talented young woman up against her first adult disappointments. Arian Moayed's Richard is an appealing figure who knows he is out of his depth with his new relations. Lauren Klein's Momo is a harrowing study in the depredations of old age. Aside from Zinn's set, which is practically a character in itself, Justin Townsend's lighting makes excellent use of selective darkness, Sarah Laux's costumes draw laser-like distinctions between the characters, and Fitz Patton's sound design powerfully evokes the eerie, unexplained thumps from the apartment upstairs. The Humans is as fine a production as this season is likely to give us; without directly evoking politics, it has much to say about how we got to this strange moment -- David Barbour 
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