Refuge by Andrew Rosendorf

I will never understand why there are playwrights who insist on using purple prose in their stage directions. Okay, so a rattlesnake stalks and eats a kangaroo rat. In what way is staging going to be helped by being informed that “Whatever family that rat had/ Whoever cared for it/ Loved it/ Won't know of him or her again/ And won't ever know why?” Short of an annoying Terrence Malick-style voiceover, the audience is never going to know either. That being said, if you could find a way to keep the audience's attention through the long series of detailed actions that read more like directions for film close-ups than a stage production, it could be a good show. It reads a bit like a Kent Haruf novel with hard-bitten characters, laconic by nature, but drawn into emotional engagement despite themselves. It’s moving without a trace of saccharine. It is definitely way too pat (in a tv crime drama sort of way) that the man who raped the border-crosser is revealed to be the border patrol agent on the walkie talkie, as given away by his propensity for listening to Journey at all times. But what do I expect from someone who describes a dead woman with the statement “Her breasts are breaking open – like a fissure in the Earth/ Her body being the Earth?” However, since the audience would be spared such sentences, and I think it would be intriguing to try to capture a sense of the vast desert in our theater, I am inclined to give this show the benefit of the doubt and say it could be worth attempting.