The Refuge Plays NYC Reviews and Tickets
Show-Score Member Reviews (140)
See it if You want to enter a wondrous world of three interlocking worlds that Answer a question of the type we ask ourselves: where do I come from?
Don't see it if You caNt understand southern dialect
See it if you are invested in multi-generational stories about families, including ones that include a few ghosts; like compelling, emotional acting.
Don't see it if 3.5 hours (with two intermissions) deter you from seeing even excellent theatre; need a musical or something super-edgy that will shock. Read more
See it if you want a play with great story telling that keeps your interest. Cast giving wonderful performances creating characters to care about.
Don't see it if you really can not invest 3 & half hours into a play. I originally was not looking forward to attending such a long play, but time flew by. Read more
See it if you'd like to take a masterful theatrical journey that involves multiple lost souls seeking refuge, sprinkled with touches of providence.
Don't see it if you're looking for a fast-paced evening of theater, don't like long plays, epic sagas or need to have every plot element fully explained.
See it if Wonderful acting. You enjoy a family saga.
Don't see it if You can’t sit for over three hours. You are not open to the magical/spiritual.
See it if You can overcome idea of 3 1/2 hr play and enjoy lively family story regressing through generations. Simple story, engrossing characters
Don't see it if You are seeking 90 min of elaborate production and gripping plot
See it if You enjoy stories about family life and what affected how a family interact with each other
Don't see it if You have no interest in the generational effects of how a family deals with each other
See it if You enjoy a generational family drama, told in reverse chronology, that keeps you routing for the characters, throughout their issues.
Don't see it if YOu can't sit for over 3 hours with only conversational dialogue.
Critic Reviews (13)
“In an attempt to imagine alternative ways of being, the playwright has smashed existing artistic forms and created new ones along the way. The result is provocative but messy...But cumbersome as it is, ‘The Refuge Plays’ suggests the potential for stories to exceed the world’s limitations. Ellison would have to agree.”
Read more
“At 3.5 hours long, ‘The Refuge Plays’ is a bear of a production, but it earns its stage time...The audience members on board for all three parts were fully on board, whooping with laughter. And in the final moments, when Crazy Eddie’s truck on stage revs into gear after breaking down, the audience energetically cheers. ‘The Refuge Plays’ is a joy ride worth taking.”
Read more
“In ‘The Refuge Plays’, Nathan Alan Davis has put together a three-part drama full of engaging small gestures that fail to add up.”
Read more
“This top-flight cast is strong enough to occasionally distract you from the cumulative impression of witnessing an epic that is a mile wide but only an inch deep.”
Read more
"The Refuge Plays, is a trilogy performed across a single evening, a multigenerational, magic-realist Black family saga that moves in reverse…It is an overcrowded, aria-packed piece so awkwardly constructed that it almost seems designed to thwart drama altogether. Thanks to some lush passages of writing and at least two first-rate performances, it's not dull, but neither does it ignite…And even as the action heads back to the original sin that launches one family's long-running conflict between isolation and wanderlust, it never gains in momentum or urgency. It's a long trip with little payoff."
Read more
“This off-the-grid shack becomes a source of refuge for everyone who visits it. And Davis's warm, affectionate evening is something of a refuge from the clank and clatter and confusion of a lot of contemporary playwrighting.”
Read more
Nathan Alan Davis’ "The Refuge Plays," if one pays attention, is exactly about refuge: growing up with it (because someone else has lovingly created it for you), seeking it (if you feel you must create your own), and coming back to the refuge you have always known (once you come to terms with the realization you’ve had no success trying to create it somewhere else). Davis, for the most part, has given us characters that we can easily fall in love with, each with their own path to refuge.
Read more
“I would have enjoyed it just as much had the story been told chronologically. That’s because Davis’s greatest accomplishment in ‘The Refuge Plays’ lies in the creation of engaging, warm-blooded, intensely human characters for whom we come to care deeply.”
Read more