Feb. 11 (Bloomberg) -- The faces in Lynn Nottage’s powerful new drama, “Ruined,” mask the unspeakable violence these women have survived. One that still stays with me belongs to a willowy girl named Sophie, whose visage has been wiped clean of expression. Her staring eyes are placid as death.

Presented by the Manhattan Theater Club at New York’s City Center, “Ruined” unfolds in a brothel on the front lines of civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The women there are, for the most part, the lucky ones -- they’re alive. They have Mama Nadi, their sashaying protector and welfare-minded pimp.

“I provide a bed, food and clothing,” she says. “If things are good, everyone gets a little. If things are bad, then Mama eats first.”

Only two rules apply to the soldiers who patronize Mama’s whorehouse near a mining town in the Ituri rainforest: Check your bullets and your politics at the door. Cash is spoken here. At the outset, however, even that modest social contract shows signs of breaking down.

Christian, a salesman with a poetic streak, teasingly dispenses red lipstick and Belgian chocolate to Mama. In his truck are three women he wants her to buy.

Brecht’s Fable

Reluctantly, she takes two: Salima, kidnapped from her own garden and gang-raped over five months; and Sophie, sexually tortured so viciously that she will be of no use as a prostitute. “She’s ruined,” Christian tells Mama, who explodes in anger that he has brought her someone who cannot earn money.

Yet Sophie, who has some education, proves useful as a singer and bookkeeper. Salima is a lively dancer until she gets pregnant by one of the soldiers. Men drawn to Sophie are diverted to Salima or the sassy Josephine, a proud chieftain’s daughter.

Mama Nadi inevitably evokes Brecht’s Mother Courage, dragging her cart through the countryside during the Thirty Years War, selling goods to both sides until she loses everything, including her children. Brecht was writing a fable about what he saw as the tragedy of capitalism. Nottage creates a world as lushly dangerous as the dense forest surrounding Mama Nadi’s place.

Unlike Brecht, Nottage is a sentimentalist and her play’s pat ending betrays the tougher spirit of the harrowing earlier parts. Until then, a superb ensemble under Kate Whoriskey’s energetic yet sensitive direction creates some of the most memorable characters you’ll see anywhere this season.

Lit Fuse

They start with Saidah Arrika Ekulona’s imposing Mama Nadi. Quincy Tyler Bernstine delivers Salima’s climactic monologue about her abduction with piercing intensity. Condola Rashad lends Sophie a dreamy quality that makes her nightmarish life all the sadder. Cherise Boothe’s Josephine is a lit fuse, sparking all over the place.

The men are equally fine: Russell Gebert Jones is loose- limbed and professorial as Christian, and Tom Mardirosian as a diamond merchant who gets something, we’re never quite sure what, from prowling this dangerous environment.

That place, with its oppressively encroaching flora, is brought to life by set designer Derek McLane and lighting designer Peter Kaczorowski, as well as Paul Tazewell’s costumes, which for the women range from mundane house dresses to sexy gowns and colorful wraps.

Through March 29 at City Center, 131 W. 55th St. Information: +1-212-581-1212; http://www.nycitycenter.org.

(Jeremy Gerard is an editor for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Jeremy Gerard in New York at jgerard2@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: February 11, 2009 00:00 EST