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    ‘The Refuge Plays’ Review: A Surreal Family Saga on the Homestead

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    A family in exile contends with its future, and its ghosts, in Nathan Alan Davis’s new Off Broadway play starring Nicole Ari Parker.The unnamed narrator of Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” retreats, after an alienating odyssey through the South and Harlem, to live in a secret cellar. Underground is both an escape from oppression and a sanctuary where he can see himself on his own terms.Ellison’s 1952 novel is like gospel to the eldest matriarch in “The Refuge Plays” by the playwright Nathan Alan Davis. “Gotta make your own world in this world,” says Early (Nicole Ari Parker), a great-grandmother homesteading with her family. She can still chop firewood and hunt squirrels with a hammer, but when we first meet Early in this keen but unwieldy family saga, opening Wednesday at the Laura Pels Theater, her daily life has evolved beyond the need for such primal skills.Four generations of Early’s family are living together in the present-day Illinois wilderness, sharing a cabin built years ago by Early and her husband, Crazy Eddie (Daniel J. Watts). The too-small sofa and ratty armchair draped with quilts and crochet (the persuasively salvaged set is by Arnulfo Maldonado) indicate a modest home where her relatives choose to live out of kinship rather than necessity.Early’s great-grandson, Ha-Ha (J.J. Wynder), is the purest product of this social experiment: a 17-year-old who is deferential, bookish and comically naïve about girls. (Many of Davis’s character names are freighted with exaggerated symbolism.) Ha-Ha’s mother, Joy (Ngozi Anyanwu), tried striking out on her own when she was younger, but eventually returned. And Joy’s mother, Gail (Jessica Frances Dukes), the wife of Early’s deceased son, Walking Man, is the functional head of the household, though not for long: The spirit of Walking Man (Jon Michael Hill), a routine and welcome visitor, has just foretold her imminent death.Davis’s grand ambitions for “The Refuge Plays” are indicated by its running time — three hours and 20 minutes, with two intermissions — and by a title that suggests its three parts may not exactly cohere. The action rewinds to the past, revealing what drove Early into the woods, why others followed and what binds them together. (“If you don’t need me, leave me,” Early tells Walking Man.) Each act operates in a different mode: Sitcom conventions play out in the first (with Early as the armchair curmudgeon); surreal and Shakespearean elements dominate the second (with ghosts who incite an Oedipal revenge plot); and the third imagines a meet-cute in exile.Daniel J. Watts and Parker play a young couple who meet-cute in exile in an earlier section of the show.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesThis Roundabout Theater Company production, directed by Patricia McGregor and presented in association with New York Theater Workshop (where McGregor is the artistic director), benefits tremendously from bold interpretations of Davis’s characters. McGregor accentuates the humor Davis weaves throughout, and even mines more from between the lines, giving the production a sustained momentum. But the pace lags when Davis’s airy lyricism occasionally tips toward the sentimental, as in the heavy-handed second act. Early, for example, insists she has cried a nearby river with her tears.Parker (“And Just Like That …”) has an innate gentility that would seem an odd match for Early’s wild fate, but there is frisson in the juxtaposition and Parker lends Early a poised ferocity. Her flinty exterior is a formidable match for Eddie, the World War II vet who becomes her husband. Slightly sideways and nursing his own wounds, he’s a philosophical jester (Watts can land punchlines with the whites of his eyes) and proof that civilization inflicts violence in many forms.“The Refuge Plays” is populated with gifted storytellers, whose language is sticky with associations (like “if all your worries was ice cream” that melted at death’s door), and who can clearly see the ills of the outside world from the safe distance of their own. They conceive their identities in relation to one another, reflecting an organic sense of human responsibility, yet rib and curse one another like the members of any family would.Davis, whose speculative 2016 drama, “Nat Turner in Jerusalem,” was also produced by New York Theater Workshop, takes a sweeping view of Black life while isolating his characters from the social contexts and systems that would otherwise shape them. Some, like Early and Eddie, have their memories to contend with, while Walking Man, who was born in the woods, encounters human injustice from an absurd angle (beneath a heifer he tries to slaughter with a switchblade).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: While the three acts interlock, they don’t propel each other forward, and Davis’s surfeit of ideas ultimately comes at the expense of a dramatic throughline. But cumbersome as it is, “The Refuge Plays” suggests the potential for stories to exceed the world’s limitations. Ellison would have to agree.The Refuge PlaysThrough Nov. 12 at Laura Pels Theater, Manhattan; roundabouttheatre.org. Running time: 3 hours 20 minutes. More

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      ‘I Needed It’: A Well-Timed Outdoor Theater Opens on Little Island

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      The island’s first performances, by Broadway Inspirational Voices choir, were post-pandemic catharsis for both the singers and the audience.The timing could not have been better.After the pandemic drove New Yorkers outdoors for everything from dining to haircuts, a 687-seat al fresco amphitheater opened for its first ticketed shows over the weekend on Little Island, the new oasis on the Hudson River, offering a new place for those tentatively re-emerging into crowds again to gather for open-air performances.The amphitheater opened with an emotionally rousing performance by Broadway Inspirational Voices, a professional choir run by Michael McElroy that is made up of chorus members who sang in Broadway musicals like “Ain’t Too Proud” and “The Lion King” before their theaters were shut down and they were thrust into unemployment.Some cheered, and some wept at the return of sights and sounds that had been in short supply during the many months of strict limitations: of hundreds of people piled into the curved wooden benches of the sleek new amphitheater, few of them masked, watching the sun set over the Hudson as a choir belted out “A Whole New World” from “Aladdin.”Michael McElroy, leader of Broadway Inspirational Voices choir and an artist in residence at Little Island, who started working on the show in January.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesThe choir, made up of Broadway musical actors, performing at dusk. The audience cheered and wept at the return of live entertainment.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesAt the show, McElroy urged the audience to reconnect with one another, opening with the line, “After the darkness, there is always the light.”Vincent Tullo for The New York Times“This is the first time that I’ve been here, and I’m overwhelmed,” said Barry Diller, the mega-mogul who paid for Little Island, before entering the amphitheater for Sunday’s performance.Although an outdoor theater was always part of the plan for Little Island, Diller had no idea how useful it would be as the city emerges from a pandemic — offering culture-starved New Yorkers a place for performances as indoor venues slowly begin to come back to life. “It’s the exact right moment,” he said.His family foundation will bankroll the first two decades of the park’s operations, which includes six days a week of arts programming. Without tickets to the amphitheater, visitors can perch themselves atop one of the island’s overlooks to peer down at the performances. Or, if they’re lucky, they can stumble upon one of the artists hired to perform at various spots on the island, like intentionally placed, well-paid buskers.The audience on Sunday. The sun sun set over the Hudson as a choir belted out “A Whole New World” from “Aladdin.”Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesThis weekend’s program was designed as a sort of post-pandemic catharsis for both the singers and the audience, some of whom rose from their seats to sway and clap along with the choir. It was shepherded by McElroy, whose homiletic interludes urged the audience to reconnect with one another, opening with the line, “After the darkness, there is always the light.”The evening of musical theater and gospel music was punctuated with drama and dance — which revolved around the themes of reawakening and reconnection. The actress Phylicia Rashad delivered a monologue about rediscovering the inner child; Daniel J. Watts and Ayodele Casel imitated sounds like thunder and a babbling brook with their tap shoes; Norm Lewis sang a commanding rendition of “Go the Distance” from “Hercules.”“Out of this space of necessary, required isolation, we come into a place that was created for community,” McElroy said in an interview.The evening featured musical theater, as well as gospel music, drama and dance — with themes of reawakening and reconnection. Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesThe show was McElroy’s last major performance with Broadway Inspirational Voices, a group that he founded in 1994, at a time when his friends were dying of AIDS and he saw a need for spiritual healing. Twenty-seven years later, McElroy has decided to leave the group to focus his time on other creative pursuits, as well as to serve as the musical theater chair at the University of Michigan.But first, McElroy wanted to put together a show that filled a new spiritual void created by the current pandemic.So in January, McElroy, an artist in residence at Little Island, started planning for a live concert scheduled for June, not knowing how quickly the city would be able to get vaccinated and return to see live theater. For the initial rehearsals, which happened on Zoom, members of the choir would gather virtually to go over the music and ask questions, then mute themselves when it was time to sing.In May, the choir moved to a spacious recording studio, where they sang socially distanced and masked. And at the end of the month, they started rehearsing in a park, and then eventually, on the island itself, which floats over the Hudson River near West 13th Street.“It’s the exact right moment” for outdoor theater, Barry Diller, the mega-mogul who paid for Little Island, said.Vincent Tullo for The New York Times“We were rehearsing on the faith that we would be able to come together and do this concert,” he said. “It all depended on where the world would be at this time.”While Broadway itself still has a few months to go before it returns in full force, about 60 of the industry’s chorus members were able to get onstage to sing songs from some of the most popular musicals of all time, including “Wicked” and “West Side Story,” as well as some of the newer musicals that were shuttered by the pandemic, including “Hadestown” and “Mrs. Doubtfire.”Watching from the audience, David Plunkett, 52, started out with his mask hanging from his wrist, then alternated between waving it in the air like it was a handkerchief at a church service, and using it to dab at his teary eyes.“I knew I needed it,” he said, “but I didn’t know how much I needed it.” More

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      ‘Only Child’ Review: A Magnetic Performer Without a Story to Match

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      The autobiographical solo show from Daniel J. Watts shows off his skill with spoken word and dance, but doesn’t add up to more than the sum of its parts.What’s your name? What’s your story?In classrooms and job interviews, on dating profiles and first dates, we’re often asked to craft an abridged narrative of our lives, to single out the events and characteristics that best define us. It’s a lot of pressure, and an impossible task, so we settle for formulaic prompts and cheesy icebreakers.The chasm between the raw material of a life and the manipulation of facts into a coherent narrative is wide enough that a writer too shaky on his feet may very well fall right in.That’s where we find Daniel J. Watts, the magnetic creator and star of “The Jam: Only Child,” a filmed rendition of his one-person show, presented for streaming by the Signature Theater in Arlington, Virginia. (The show also had a brief run at the Public Theater in 2020, as part of the Under the Radar festival.)Watts, who earned a well-deserved Tony Award nomination for his performance as Ike Turner in “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical,” has the irrepressible energy and timing of a stand-up comic, and his bouncy jabber-jawed delivery connects even through the screen.And while the production, directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz, is sleek, stylish and technically sound, the script finds Watts unable to transcend platitudes, relying instead on our current conversations about race and gender to shape his story and give it pertinence.“Only Child” opens with Watts emanating such ease that you can’t help but want to be seduced by the beats and bops of the performance. In denim overalls, a matching jacket and red cap, he cruises out on what looks like the concert platform of the flyest club in town. There’s a mysterious depth to the intimate room, thanks to Adam Honoré’s lighting design, with DJ Duggz behind turntables in the back center, there to accompany the monologue with sounds as varied as Nelly’s “Hot in Herre” and perky, easy listening.With the lackadaisical swagger of the cool kid in school, Watts greets DJ Duggz with a choreographed handshake, then somersaults into a spoken word rhythm, the hybrid of theater and rap that recalls the master of the form, Lin-Manuel Miranda. (Watts gets the connection, declaring himself “somewhere between Sammy Davis, Dave Chappelle, Leguizamo and Lin-Manuel.”)He begins with his 1980s childhood in North Carolina, eating Gushers and Zebra Cakes, watching “ThunderCats” and discovering the fun of lighting things on fire in the bathroom while his single mother isn’t around. He grows up awkward around girls, perennially friend-zoned, and has a breakdown in college that has him question his relationship to masculinity and sexuality. All the while the shadowy absence of his father looms in the background.The show finds Watts describing his North Carolina childhood and struggling with his identity as a Black man.via the Signature TheaterAs a writer, Watts is enamored with metaphor, but his analogies get muddled. Within the first few minutes, he has already described the process of putting together this theatrical memoir, from scraps of poetry and raps and recollections, as unearthing skeletons in the closet, unpacking boxes in an attic and grabbing jars of jam from the pantry shelves.And where is he headed? Despite its title, the show never effectively captures how being an only child affected his development. He describes his admiration for his mother, but she isn’t presented as a fully developed figure. And he glosses over his relationship with his father, until, more than halfway in, he drops the briefest mention of abusive behavior, and refers to the rage he holds onto, before moving along.In casting about for shape to his story, Watts reaches for politics. He uses his college sexual experiences to talk about consent, but his attempt to hold himself accountable for a questionable drunken hookup — plus his regret at the loss of an idol in Bill Cosby after the comedian’s sexual assault allegations — come across as tone-deaf.Similarly, a section in which he shares his anger as a Black man in America, name-dropping many of the unjustly killed Black people in recent years, reads like a grasp for political relevance more than a personal tie-in. Because Watts fails to unpack — or even really mention — his relationship to race until this roll call of victims, it feels incidental, despite how poignantly these tragedies may ring true for him in real life.Late in the 90-minute show, Watts dons tap shoes to dance out a drunken spiral, a physical representation of his tumble down to rock bottom. He trips across the stage with his upper body slumped over, arms carelessly flailing in a pantomime of a man stumbling after one too many beers.It’s a cleverly conceived performance, shifting from spoken word to tap, another medium in which Watts tells us he found comfort. But Watts struggles to transition back to his story, making the routine feel more like a musical interlude set to the sounds of Bob Marley.So what’s the upshot of a show electrically performed yet sloppily composed? Watts seems to fumble for the answer himself, ending on a handful of clichés and bumper-sticker affirmations about living one’s truth and saying yes to life.“Only Child” is a reminder that translating a life into art can take time and distance. Watts has talent to spare, and as for the story — well, doesn’t the saying go that all writing is rewriting?Daniel J. Watts’ The Jam: Only ChildThrough May 7; sigtheatre.org. More