"In the mundane brutality of 'The Refugees,' Kaliski lays bare the tangle of history, diplomacy, and politics that separates the Cuban defector from the Honduran border-crosser. Most refugees will have had little to no control over the circumstances that placed them into one category or another. In that way, the fatalist Greeks have something to teach Americans as we nervously stride into the 21st century clinging to our notion of free will and hoping to bend the arc of history toward justice."
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"Alas, as a tool of social and political activism, the play lacks necessary urgency. Understandably, 'The Refugees' as a Greek tragedy shows the universality and historical significance of the ongoing humanitarian crises. It gives us a chance to consider the issue apart from the reported caravans moving toward our own borders or the millions of homeless people in the rest of the world."
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Kaliski attempts a clever conceit marrying "The Oresteia" characters to the modern tragic story of the homeless hordes. Does "The Oresteia" provide an effective jumping off point to explore this timely and heartbreaking issue? Sadly, the answer is no. Kaliski has written a play whose subject matter is only tangentially connected to the characters Orestes, Electra and Clytemnestra who, in Greek mythology, lived in ancient Argos. Their stories of patricide and matricide and other ‘cides have no connection—emotional or situational—to the problem at hand and Kaliski doesn’t try very hard to splice the two subject matters together.
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"Although ‘Refugees’ may sound like an earnest, even preachy exercise on paper, Stephen Kaliski, wielding a deft mix of skepticism and whimsy, portrays both the issues at hand and the people divided over them as maddeningly complicated."
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"'The Refugees' unfolds in a world that is simultaneously our own and that of classical Greek drama. As a modernized House of Atreus struggles internally with how to deal with the refugees who have made their way to an Argos spared by chance from climatic disaster, this movingly clear-sighted show, which is partnered with Women for Afghan Women, ... asks us to consider how far and to whom our obligation to help extends."
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