Theatre in Review: Our Lady of Kibeho (Signature Theatre)

	Owiso Odera and T. Ryder Smith. Photo: Joan Marcus

Just about the last thing one expects to see in the theatre these days is a play about Marian visions. Nevertheless, the very brave Katori Hall takes on the true story of three young Rwandan girls who, in 1981, began to see appearances of Mary, the Mother of God. Hall dares to treat the experiences as quite possibly authentic, but this is not a drama of inspiration. At times, it plays like a thriller, and it climaxes in a bloody and frightening preview of Rwanda's future.

The play unfolds at Kibeho College, a Catholic girls' secondary school in Rwanda, in 1981 - 82. Or, as the program, says, "Before," knowing that nothing more is needed to remind us of the horrific tribal violence that will ravage the country. When Father Tuyishime, the priest who runs the school, casually says, "Tutsi women always have the prettiest smiles," the remark sends a frisson of fear, because we know too well where the divisions of the Tutsi and Hutu will end up. Later, when someone says of the Tutsi, "They think they are better than everyone," the creeping sense of dread only increases.

The first of the visionaries, Alphonsine, bemuses the school's superiors and earns the scorn of her fellow students with accounts of her sightings. Father Tuyishime gently tries to talk her out of them, but is gradually taken in by her sincere descriptions, which do not seem to be the product of an overwrought or mischievous mind. (When asked to describe the Blessed Virgin's appearance, Alphonsine says simply, "She was not white or black. She was just beautiful.") The other girls at the school are convinced that Alphonsine is a fraud, and when she slips into a vision, they try to distract her by playing an improvised game of ring toss, trying to make their rosaries land on her outstretched arms.

But soon Alphonsine is joined by fellow students Anathalie and Marie-Clare. The latter is one of the school's tougher nuts--in a rage, she tells Sister Evangelique, who oversees the girls, "I could run this place better than you"--and her submission to the visions sends shock waves through the school. By now, word is starting to get out about the girls, and not everyone is happy about it. The father of one of them furiously asks, "If the village thinks I have a daughter who is a witch, who will buy my bananas?" When, during a vision, two of the girls appear to float in the air, and the bed of a third rises up of its own volition, it becomes impossible to keep the news inside the school walls.

Indeed, the outside world will intrude more and more on Kibeho College. A boy claims to be healed by one of the girls and other locals experience a vision of the sun spinning in the sky. Father Flavia, a skeptical investigator from the Vatican, shows up to conduct invasive, sometimes remarkably cruel tests. (He injects one girl with a sharp needle during a vision; she does not react in pain, but bleeds in the shape of a cross.) The priest cannot credit how such ordinary-seeming young ladies, with their shaky grasp of basic catechism, can be having such extraordinary experiences, but one when one of them speaks to him, in Italian (a language she does not know) of intimate family matters, he is stunned. Meanwhile, the local bishop wants to create an African Lourdes that will bring in dollars from devout tourists.

It all builds to a stunning climax in which the girls, surrounded by crowds of the faithful and covered by television news, deliver a message not of piety or hope but of the bloodbath to come. This sequence is vividly rendered by the projection designer, Peter Nigrini, and the sound designer, Matt Tierney. Throughout Our Lady of Kibeho, the Rwandan characters refer to their beautiful country as the place where God comes for His vacation. Primed to receive a message of piety, they instead learn that they are living on the edge of an abyss.

Hall constructs her strange story with masterful skill, carefully ratcheting up the tension in each successive scene while taking time to flesh out each character and weave the web of friendships, rivalries, and crushes that make up the life of the school. Michael Greif's direction rightly doesn't hurry the drama along; he is confident that we will be drawn into the mystery of the girls and he saves his big effects for the climax, when they make such an unnerving impression. The excellent cast includes Nneka Okafor, Mandi Masden, and Joaquina Kalukango as Alphonsine, Anathalie, and Marie-Clare; Starla Benford as the tough, unbelieving Sister Evangelique; Owiso Odera as Father Tuyishime, who struggles with the evidence in front of his eyes; and T. Ryder Smith as the silken, cynical representative of Rome.

Our Lady of Kibeho is a big play and the production team has provided an expansive, evocative design. Rachel Hauck's scenic design makes use of a series of low-slung buildings; one of them revolves to reveal Father Tuyishime's office and others can be arranged to make the interior of the girls' dormitory or the yard outside. These are surrounded by palm trees, and, above the stage on the side walls, a trio of projection screens show Nigrini's images of the Rwandan countryside, which go a long way toward confirming the characters' high opinion of their homeland. Ben Stanton's lighting design creates some powerful effects with sidelight, but at times I wished he had focused more on the actors' faces; in some scenes, set at night, with unfamiliar actresses dressed in school uniforms and similar wigs, it can be a little difficult to tell who is speaking. Tierney's sound design ranges from the voices of girls raising their voices to God to a terrible thunderstorm that harrows the stage. Emily Rebholz's costumes, which consist mostly of clerical garb and uniforms, feel right, and she dresses the smaller roles, including that of a news reporter, in a way that feels authentic to the early '80s time frame.

Our Lady of Kibeho ends on an unsettled note, with the visions seeming to disappear and Father Flavia heading off to Medjugorje, Yugoslavia, the site of another historically accurate--and more widely disputed--set of Marian appearances. All seems calm once again, except that a terrible storm is coming, one that everyone in the play has been warned about, but which nobody seems able to accept. In the end, the authenticity of the girls' visions is almost beside the point; what one takes away is the awareness of how easily a civil society can slide into bloody chaos. It's a thought that should give pause even to the least religious member of the audience.--David Barbour