If a rhapsody is defined as something extravagantly enthusiastic, ecstatic, or excessively emotional, what is rhapsodic in Yussef El Guindi’s Refugee Rhapsody, now playing as part of the 36th season of the Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF) in Shepherdstown, West Virginia? The quest ion arises because the overall arc of the play bends toward destroyed relationships and shattered lives affecting its three main characters — not exactly rhapsodic. As the play begins, Sakinah (Ellena Eshraghi) is in jail, charged with a violent crime, the victim and precise nature of which are revealed only halfway through the play. Jenny (Jada Alston Owens), a therapist hired by her defense attorney, questions her, seeking to determine whether there are grounds for an insanity defense. Much of the action proceeds as a memory play, with Sakinah acting as both narrator and participant, while Jenny, like the audience, is a listener and observer of Sakinah’s story. Shelby Alayne Antel (Emily), Ellena Eshraghi (Sakinah), and Revon Yousif (Fouad) in ‘Refugee Rhapsody.’ Photo by Seth Freeman. In the thrift store where Sakinah works, a rack of expensive-looking, glamorous dresses appears. Both try them on (a glittery red dress fits Fouad perfectly). As a lark, they wear them to a party given by the dresses’ donor, Emily (Shelby Alayne Antel).  Emily is a vision: tall, willowy, blonde, the super-rich daughter of an oligarch-level father. She is also kind, empathetic, and explicitly conscious of the privilege deriving from her wealth and beauty. She says all the right things and supports all the right causes, including welcoming refugees, though she is not immune from showing off the carelessness of wealth, as in providing snacks of excessively expensive caviar. There is mutual fascination. Emily invites the couple to her mansion, represented in Afsoon Pajoufar’s set design in a restrained, neutral shade, a space complete with a Rothko-like painting on the wall. In short order, Emily and Fouad quickly pair up, sidelining Sakinah. This is the first moment in the play that might be described as rhapsodic: in the slow-motion intimacy beautifully choreographed by intimacy director Shea-Mikal Green, Emily and Fouad find a kind of ecstasy.  The Emily/Fouad relationship remains rhapsodic, to hear Emily tell it. She gets to wake up next to someone who embodies her self-image of her goodness — she romanticizes Fouad’s stories of his refugee journey — and gets pregnant in the bargain. Sakinah can’t stand it, which leads up to the crime at the center of the play. The play’s focus on social class dynamics has a greater impact on the story than the refugee backgrounds of Sakinah and Fouad. On one end of the scale, we have Emily and her inherited wealth. On the other, Sakinah and Fouad are struggling working-class people, who in economic terms could as easily be marginalized white folks from West Virginia as Arab-Americans. When they try on Emily’s dresses at the thrift shop, they are in a sense donning the skin of a class to which they can only aspire. Representing the middle class, we have Jenny (the aforementioned therapist) and her husband, Richard (Joshua David Scarlett), a Black couple working hard to succeed in the professional world, with the anxieties that attend such striving. Richard worries that his wife’s work with a controversial defendant could hurt his position at the nonprofit he works for, which is funded by Emily’s father.  Joshua David Scarlett (Richard) and Jada Alston Owens (Jenny) in ‘Refugee Rhapsody.’ Photo by Seth Freeman. Sakinah’s story of how she came to commit the crime concludes roughly two-thirds of the way through the play. The remainder focuses on the aftermath, which breaks the relationships among the principal characters and alters the course of their lives.  In a wonderful example of good physical acting, Emily talks to Jenny about the trial. Before the crime, Emily’s physicality was relaxed, with flowing, graceful gestures, wearing, in Lux Haac’s costume design, an elegant, shimmering dress in a neutral shade. Now she wears a black blouse with a severe skirt, and her body language — arms crossed in front of her body — is tight.  In considering Sakinah’s crime and what led to it, the play touches on a perennial question: where is the dividing line between evil and madness? While it is clear, as a legal matter, that Sakinah could not successfully make an insanity defense at trial, the matter of her sanity remains in doubt.  The playwright makes a fascinating choice to probe the matter. Twice in the show, Sakinah encounters a 19th-century painting of a slave on a raft, on a stormy sea. The figure on the raft, Waleed (played by Scarlett, with a convincing Caribbean accent, in a much more striking role than that of Richard), talks to her and eventually steps down from the painting. His escape — dressed in a stunning blue suit — can be viewed as the final rhapsodic moment of the play. Waleed’s exit also gives director Zi Alikhan the opportunity for a delightfully surprising use of the theater space. So what are we seeing here? Scenes of magical realism inserted into an otherwise naturalistic play? The representation of a psychotic break on Sakinah’s part? (If so, a good lawyer could plausibly assert that she was incompetent to stand trial.) A symbolic statement of the desperate need to escape from the frame into which others have put you, as sort of psychic refugee? The play wisely leaves that for the audience’s consideration. The level of acting is excellent throughout. As Sakinah, Eshraghi is verbally quick, acerbic, angry, good at hiding her feelings from herself and others until they burst forth. Yousif’s Fouad is more passive, acted upon by Sakinah and then Emily, not trying hard to control his fate. Owens’s Jenny is a hard-working professional, trying to help people caught in the machinery of the legal system.  The technical side of the production is as sound as I have come to expect from CATF. The set is functional, featuring a large rectangular unit that stagehands (dressed in white, interestingly, rather than the traditional black) move slowly around to form walls of different settings.  Venus Gulbrandson’s lighting design was specific, whether using area lighting to denote a particular location or a special to focus on a character. One nice moment involved capturing Emily and Fouad’s embrace on the sofa on stage right in low area lighting while highlighting Sakinah upstage left and Jenny downstage left as they talked about the event. There are effective moments in which the lighting creates dramatic shadows of the characters. CATF’s blurb for the show quotes Sakinah’s line from the play’s first scene: “Because love will always carve you up eventually.” In an interview in the online program, playwright El Guindi comments, “The older I get, I keep questioning love.… Now that old age has kind of swept in, I’m looking at it more objectively and am less enthralled.” In the play, love acts as a largely destructive force, leaving none of the three main characters intact. Yes, there are rhapsodic moments, but where do they lead us? The play is a well-written, well-paced example of the thoughtful theater for which CATF is justly renowned.  Running Time: 90 minutes with no intermission. Refugee Rhapsody plays through August 2, 2026, presented by the Contemporary American Theater Festival, performing in Studio 112 on the campus of Shepherd University, 92 West Campus Drive, Shepherdstown, WV, in repertory with four other plays. Tickets, priced at $75 ($67 for seniors and $65 for students), are available online. Times, dates, and ticketing information for the full festival may be found on the CATF website or by calling the CATF box office at 681-240-2283. SEE ALSO:Contemporary American Theater Festival announces casts and creative teams for 2026 mainstage season (news story, June 20, 2026) ...read more read less