Playwright: Sonja Linden
At: Victory Gardens, 2257 N. Lincoln
Phone: ( 773 ) 871-3000; $35-$40
Runs through: March 5
There's a wonderful scene that comes about three-quarters of the way through this tale of a refugee from the Rwandan genocide of the Tutsis of 1994. Its virtues exemplify what makes this powerfully moving production work, because it crystallizes the simplicity and emotional charge running through this lean 90-minute play. In the scene, our heroine, Juliette, who has fled to London after seeing her family massacred and all she's known and loved destroyed, sits in her ascetic hostel room on the anniversary of the deaths of her family. To commemorate the date, she has before her several small candles. In turn, she lights each one and says something about each family member who was killed. The stage is dark, the audience is still, and the thoughts she shares about each are simple things: one was smart, one was beautiful … nothing elaborate, nothing cloying or manipulative. It is the simplicity and demonstration of heartfelt—not contrived—emotion that had everyone watching sniffling. With this one scene, so bare and simply rendered, we see into the nearly incomprehensible anguish this young woman feels. It also helps that the performer, Yetide Badaki, has created a character so real and fresh that we immediately love her and empathize with her pain. Badaki's performance is so genuine that it's hard to imagine anyone else playing the role; it's hard, indeed, to imagine Badaki as a real person outside the charming and pained Juliette.
Director Andrea J. Dymond has staged Young Lady from Rwanda with a keen sense of pacing and a firm pulse on her characters: their flaws, their hopes, their ambitions, their pain, and their dreams. In short, she brings this story of the burgeoning relationship between the refugee Juliette and a refugee outreach worker she has aligned with to complete, mesmerizing life. The worker, played with an air of genteel intellectualism and failure by Lance Baker, dances around attraction and compassion as he coaxes the shy, but strong, Juliette to tell her tragic story from her own perspective. Their comings together and pullings apart are the stuff of countless plays, movies and books, but here it seems fresh and original, probably because the events it's based on are so real, recent and tragic, but also because of the reverence the performers and director obviously had for the material. The only minor flaw in the play is the wish that the director and Baker had reached beyond such clichéd expression for the character of Simon, the outreach worker. He's all tweed, spectacles and elbow-patched cardigans. A more original interpretation of the character might have deepened the play's emotional pull, rather than this character, which is well-written, but crafted from elements straight out of central casting.
All in all, though, this is one of the most beautiful and moving stories I've seen told on a Victory Gardens stage, and it's not to be missed.