Danai Gurira's 2009 play Eclipsed made a splash on Broadway last year with Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong'o starring, and it's currently finishing a short, two-week run at the newly reopened Curran Theater — the second of two productions coming direct from Broadway selected by artistic director and producer Carole Shorenstiein Hays that represent her intention to bring more edgy theater to San Francisco. And much like Fun Home before it, it represents the type of complicated and un-commercial theater that often does not make it out of New York or on tour — or, if it does, it's picked up years later by repertory companies and regional theaters that like to push the boundaries of their subscriber bases.

Eclipsed was the first play with an all black female cast and creative team to appear on Broadway, and it was nominated for a Tony for Best Play (and won one for costume design). For those reasons alone it is worth seeing, and the Curran production also boasts some impressive performances by its cast of five, all portraying women who have been variously trapped by the Second Liberian Civil War.

As an American who perhaps hasn't kept track of the plethora of brutal civil conflicts that have torn apart a variety of African nations over the past forty years, you may be forgiven for not knowing that Liberia had two civil wars in recent decades, separated only by a couple of years, with the second ending in 2003. It should be noted that Gurira, while she is African-American, is actually first-generation African-American, and her parents emigrated from Zimbabwe in 1964.

Eclipsed drops us into the conflict in mid-2002, and concrete hovel outside Monrovia where two women who only refer to each other as numbers are hiding a teenage girl under a plastic tub whenever the soldiers who essentially own them pass by. We're never told how the character known as The Girl (Ayesha Jordan) appeared at this compound, but we immediately understand that the oldest woman there, known as Number One (Stacey Sargeant) — who is only about 25 years old but isn't even sure about that, and has only known war and sexual servitude since she was a young girl — is intent on protecting her as long as she can, as a mother might.

Protection doesn't go far in this world where these women, Number One and Number Three (Joneice Abbot-Pratt), "wives" of a commanding officer (CO) whose face we never see, live only to cook meals and serve his sexual needs, and never get to leave the compound. Before long, while she goes out of the hut one night pee, The Girl is discovered by the CO, and she is immediately known as Number Four.

Stirring up the day-to-day routines of the three women are visits by the former Number Two (Adeola Role), who has given up being a sex slave in favor of becoming a rebel soldier, taking pride in the semi-automatic rifle she now carries everywhere. Also disrupting this small world is an older woman, Rita (Akosua Busia), a representative of the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace organization who ultimately pressured President Charles Taylor to engage in peace talks.

And in between, there is a surprising amount of comic relief provided by a beat up copy of a biography of Bill Clinton which only Number Four knows how to read, and serves as a nightly bedtime story about Congress, impeachment, and Clinton's own Number Two named Monica.

The balance between light and darkness is achieved throughout by astute direction by Liesl Tommy, who was Tony-nominated for her work on this play on Broadway.

The fascinating and wrenching moral tension that Gurira highlights in the play is that between the fog — and intoxication — of war, as felt by women empowered for the first time in their lives by become soldiers, and the fact that these women had to be complicit in the atrocities their fellow male soldiers regularly committed against fellow Liberians in Charles Taylor's army, and in villages loyal to him. Number Two convinces Number Four to join her as a rebel fighter, but it isn't long before Number Four is faced with just such an atrocity, and literal blood on her hands that becomes a horror she may never forget.

Role's performance as Number Two is a powerful one, but Jordan shines especially powerfully in role N'yongo played on Broadway, transforming between Acts One and Two from a skittish, innocent child to an angry soldier — representing also the use of child soldiers in this conflict.

Also stunning is Sargeant as the initially powerful but soon fragile Number One, whose world is upended as the only existence she's ever known suddenly falls away.

There are only four performances left of this play, but judging by Thursday's full house and standing ovation at curtain call, it's a play that strikes a chord and speaks powerfully to Bay Area audiences. Assuming you can stomach such serious fare, check it out before it's gone.

Eclipsed plays through Sunday, April 19. Find tickets here or via the TodayTix app.