Washington Post - Recommended
"...The singularly horrific nature of Sophie’s scars gives the play its title, and in Holmes, the production finds its splendid heart. Seen locally over the past year in plays by Shakespeare and the contemporary dramatist Tarell Alvin McCraney, Holmes has shown herself capable of range. But those performances do not prepare you for the manner in which she melts into her tender “Ruined” character, a girl every father wants to avenge and every mother seeks to console. (Her renditions of Sophie’s songs, performed club-style for the leering soldiers, provide a joyous counterpoint to her plight.)"
Washington Examiner - Highly Recommended
"...Lynn Nottage's compelling drama "Ruined," at Arena Stage, deals primarily in large moments and emotions. It begins with a display of anger, then moves to fury, threatening, violence, jealousy and aggression. Yet it is because of this surface noise that the rare, intimate moments of "Ruined" have the profound effect they do, delivering Nottage's stunning message about survival in spite of devastation."
Baltimore Sun - Highly Recommended
"...The audience realizes quickly and uncomfortably that given the realities of life during wartime, a job in Mama's brothel is a stroke of good luck. But it's unclear how long the women's refuge will last, because Mama is playing a high-stakes balancing game in which she caters to soldiers on both sides of the conflict."
DCist - Highly Recommended
"...Ruined is a play for those who want some real good laughs with their moral outrage or vice versa. The show is twice as funny as it would otherwise have been, precisely because it is set in dark times, and twice as painful because the characters making us laugh one moment are suffering not too long after. This Pulitzer-prize winning drama by Lynn Nottage is being given a raucous and affecting realization at Arena Stage."
Examiner - Highly Recommended
"...My hearing isn’t so great, and I must confess that I lost several lines of dialogue along the way, though never the point. Holmes seemed to be mic’d for the singing, and I found myself wishing that the actors had been amplified throughout. That said, “Ruined” is a great story, beautifully told. Bravo!"
MetroWeekly - Highly Recommended
"...Still, though a specter of terrible violence haunts Ruined -- and will haunt you long after you leave the theater -- any treatment of war and women written and performed with such power, grace and humanity is simply not to be missed."
WeLoveDC - Highly Recommended
"...There are 683 seats in the Fichandler theater at Arena Stage. The house was packed for Ruined, playwright Lynn Nottage’s 2009 Pulitzer Prize winning play about the atrocities inflicted on women during the Second Congo War (1998-2003). They laughed, they cried, they applauded. They applauded a lot. And then they left. I heard many say “phenomenal” as they exited the theater."
Washington City Paper - Recommended
"...Nottage’s play is a little dialogue heavy, and at times it feels like it’s wrestling with the burden of explaining why the civil strife in the DRC was so intractable and so seemingly random. (Rare minerals, tribal hatreds, external peculations—all infuriatingly familiar, if you’ve paid any attention to the legacies of colonialism in Africa, and yet they intertwine in singularly deadly ways here.) In the Fichandler’s in-the-round space, the passions in play lead some of the cast to push a bit, and between the shouting and the accents, some passages get a little muddy."
Washingtonian - Highly Recommended
"...This is a heartbreaking and powerful play, and its effects linger long after the actors leave the stage. But as a reminder of the power of resilience, it’s uplifting, and its message deserves to be heard."
BrightestYoungThings - Highly Recommended
"...Nottage wrote Ruined to show the rest of the world how women in Congo can be reborn into Hell each day. But more importantly that there is also a way to escape, even to find happiness and trust once again. Late in the play Mama Nadi is angry with Christian after he recites a poem to her. She spits at his flowery language and tells him, "It's wind. If you can't place it on a scale, it's nothing." It seems as though Mama Nadi's will always be a cynic. There should be no reason to have dreams as an abused prostitute. But the girls find courage in solidarity and show that idealism can persevere. The play's impact is overwhelming and undeniable, having screened special performances to United Nations delegates as well as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It highlights an urgent problem in the real world and also plays out as a masterpiece of modern theater. If there is one play you see this year, you will be hard pressed to find one better than Ruined."
DCTheatreScene - Highly Recommended
Lynn Nottage’s Ruined at Arena Stage hits all the high marks of truly compelling theater. Based on horrific conditions endured by women caught in the crosshairs of the deadliest war in the Congo that claimed millions of lives between 1998 and 2003, the compelling story line grabs attention from the beginning and doesn’t let go.
