“The Refuge Plays” at the Laura Pels Theatre (Photo: Joan Marcus)
The concept of the safe space has been around since the gay liberation movement in the early 1970s. The characters of The Refuge Plays, now playing at the Laura Pels Theatre, have taken the idea to the next level. They have made a home out of their safe space; they’ve created safe lives.
The Refuge Plays are three one-acts concerning a Black family over multiple generations. The first play, Protect the Beautiful Place, takes place in the present day. Four generations sharing a small house prepare for the death of matriarch Gail. Though vigorously healthy, Gail’s demise has been foretold by the ghost of her husband, Walking Man, a prophecy everyone in the house (daughter Joy, grandson Ha-Ha, and Walking Man’s still-living mother, Early) believes unquestioningly – everyone, that is, except Gail. When Walking Man reappears (his visits are so regular they are run-of-the-mill), he is able to convince Gail to accept, even embrace, her fate.
The second act, Walking Man, takes place at the end of the Vietnam War. Congenitally restless Walking Man, now alive and searching for himself, meets the ghosts of his wife’s grandparents who reveal that his real father raped his mother. Enraged, Walking Man intends to seek revenge until he meets Gail, who calms his bloodlust and may cure his peripatetic ways.
The third play, Early’s House, is a much more straightforward two-hander. Early, twenty years younger than in the previous act, has recently given birth to an unnamed baby and is living alone in the forest when concerned acquaintance and wannabe paramour, Ed (“I go by Crazy Eddie now”), shows up with a pickup truck filled with food. Early, accustomed to her outcast status, is standoffish, but gradually Crazy Eddie wears down her defenses and they start to plan for a future together.
The three plays together paint a picture of a family encountering life’s challenges and coming out on top. Each play shares the same structure – an existing problem is solved by an optimistic newcomer. It’s almost as if the characters that live in this safe space take it for granted and need new blood to remind them of how magical their home is.
And the unnamed haven they call home is magical. Not only do ghosts exist and interact with the living (even bankrolling their ventures), their safe space is free from the racism of White America – or really any of the problems of modern society. Born without a birth certificate, Walking Man doesn’t have to worry about being drafted to fight in Vietnam, a war fought disproportionally by Black Americans. Characters smoke pipes without health concerns. Crazy Eddie, maimed during WWII, doesn’t have to interact with the bureaucracy that denied veterans’ benefits to his armless friend Big Earl. And the only outsiders who find this rural refuge are ones who end up staying – they seem fated to be there.
A space safe from the problems of America is (understandably) immensely appealing to these outsiders. When newcomer Symphony, who has just had her car stolen in real America, learns Ha-Ha lives in the middle of the woods, she has to see his home immediately. Upon arriving, she says, “It feels like, Church or something in here.” Her intense reaction is mirrored by Gail’s at the end of the second act. She tells Walking Man, “If I had a place like this to live I wouldn’t never leave it.” This isn’t the claustrophobic basement hideaway in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (a book Ha-Ha is reading for the umpteenth time). This is freedom.
Unfortunately, the play’s inconsistencies stand in the way of its success. With a runtime of three-and-a-half hours, the play takes much too long to get to where it needs to go. The last two acts are compelling and relatively tight, but the lengthy first act feels more like an afterthought. The action meanders and the characters are less driven. In act three, Early fights for her very survival. She’s fierce and constantly changing strategies. She’s killed a bear to survive! On the other hand, Gail, the focus of act one, is piqued everyone thinks she is going to die, then a ghost tells her that she will die (why is she the last to know?) and it’s okay. Second act conflicts are existential; third act conflicts are life-or-death. The first act is filled with sniping. Nathan Alan Davis’s script is ambitious, attempting to tell his story over three generations, but it feels like he is trying to include too much.
While the actors who dominate the action of the second and third plays are terrific, particularly Jon Michael Hill as Walking Man and Daniel J. Watts as Crazy Eddie, the first act’s performers are less engaging and dynamic. Even Nicole Ari Parker, who is mesmerizing in the last act, feels like a caricature in the first.
Design elements are good across the board. The lighting by Stacey Derosier meshes nicely with the satisfying minimalism of Arnulfo Maldonado’s sets (though, again, the first act feels cluttered with realistic props that clash with the plays’ understated aesthetic). Shout out to director Patricia McGregor for trusting her actors to perform without mics for the most part. So many plays are miked and it’s a shame; The Refuge Plays’ actors are able to convey details that mics might obscure. Emilio Sosa’s costumes subtly convey the period of each act without calling attention. Marc Anthony Thompson’s music and sound bring some unity to the evening.
Strangely, the show’s one character denied the safe space Early and Crazy Eddie have created is Eddie’s flamboyant brother, Dax. Dax (played by Lance Coadie Williams with verve) is seeking his own safe space in Paris, following in the footsteps of James Baldwin, “with a pen in one hand, and a cigarette in the other. Talking shit to everybody.” Truthfully, it’s a bit jarring that this space isn’t safe for the plays’ one gay character.
As a White theatergoer, despite my love for so many African-American domestic dramas that confront the specter of racism (most recently the amazing, too-short-lived “Fat Ham,” for instance), it was refreshing to see Twentieth Century Black Americans living not in reaction to White America but independent from it. I found myself wondering how the Black couple sitting in front of me saw the play. Did the theater create a safe space for them? Was such a thing even possible?