Rwanda was indeed about to be engulfed by an ocean of bloodshed. An estimated 800,000 of its citizens, most of them Tutsis attacked by Hutus, were slaughtered in just 100 days in 1994 while the world did nothing. By the end of “The Overwhelming,’’ J.T. Rogers’s searing drama about the genocide, Jack will have to confront what it means to “stand up’’ in a country that is unhinged by ethnic hatred, where the citizenry is, as one Rwandan character says, trapped by history.
Rogers writes with fierce urgency and moral force, and the fine Company One cast is with him every step - and misstep - of the way.
The misstep involves the overlapping dialogue the playwright has built into “The Overwhelming.’’ Presumably the intent was to convey the culture-clash tangle of misunderstanding and miscommunication between the characters, but for an audience that is trying to follow a complicated story line that plays out in short, rapid-fire scenes, it is frustrating when actors repeatedly cut each other off in mid-sentence or talk over each other, as Rogers has instructed them to do in the text of his play.
But on balance, the cast at Company One handles this performance challenge admirably. A particular standout is John Adekoje as Samuel Mizinga, a sophisticated, charming, and lethal official in the Rwandan government. Mizinga, a Hutu, embodies the sense of national grievance, the willingness to scapegoat the Tutsis (whom he calls “killers, terrorists armed to the teeth’’ and “cockroaches’’), and the ruthlessness that would combine to create the genocide. His goal for his country, Mizinga says with a chilling smile, is simple: “To wipe the slate clean and start again.’’
Into this maelstrom saunters Jack (Doug Bowen-Flynn); his second wife, Linda (Lyndsay Allyn Cox), who is black and rather enjoying seeing her husband be in the minority for once; and Jack’s teenage son, Geoffrey (Gabe Goodman), from his first marriage.
A professor of political science, Jack has brought his family to Rwanda to write a book about his onetime college roommate, Dr. Joseph Gasana (movingly portrayed by Cedric Lilly), a Tutsi who runs a children’s HIV clinic in the capital, Kigali.
