Lynn Nottage's play arrives in London laden with American honours. And rightly so, since it offers a graphic portrait of women as perennial victims of war. More than that, it reminds us of the continuing conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which rarely makes the front pages but has led to 5.4m deaths.
Nottage's focus is very precise: she deals with a bar-cum-brothel in a small Congolese mining town on the edge of the rainforest. The bar's presiding spirit is Mama Nadi who believes, like Brecht's Mother Courage, that as long as business is good and she avoids taking sides, she can survive the war. But, in the course of the action, head and heart come into conflict.
Mama takes on board two new girls, Sophie and Salima, both of whom have been subjected to extreme sexual violence. Inevitably Mama discovers that, in trying to shield the girls from further cruelty and appease both government troops and rebel militia, she jeopardises both their lives and her own profiteering livelihood.
What Nottage brings out strongly is the multiple sufferings inflicted on women. Salima is a farmer's wife who describes how she was subjected to gang rape. As if that were not sufficient punishment, she is regarded as "ruined" by her husband who, she says, "was too proud to bear my shame but not proud enough to protect me from it".
But, although the play vividly depicts a war zone in which women's bodies are treated as battlegrounds, it has a glimmer of hope. Without minimising the pain, it becomes a tribute to women's endurance. Admittedly the climax lacks the ruthless logic of the Brechtian prototype. But, unusually for an American playwright, Nottage deals with global rather than purely domestic issues and raises our awareness of the use of rape as a military tactic.
Direction, design and acting are also first-rate. Indhu Rubasingham's production, aided by Dominic Kanza's music, depicts Mama Nidi's bar as a gaudy refuge from the horrors of war. Robert Jones's revolving, corrugated-iron set presents this louche, rainswept niterie in vivid detail. And Jenny Jules excellently captures all Mama's qualities: her arrogance and pride, her limited economic vision, and her maternal protectiveness towards her stable of girls. Pippa Bennett-Warner's vulnerable Sophie, Michelle Asante's defiant Salima, and Lucian Msamati as an ebullient salesman also hit the mark.
It's not merely a good play. It jolts our conscience about a forgotten conflict. One emerges both shaken and stirred.