"One of the top plays of the year... A richly textured mix of Brechtian allegory and Homeric epic, finding new meaning in an essential American tragedy." --Richard Zoglin,
Time "By turns philosophical and playful, lyrical and earthy,
Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3) swoops, leaps, dives and soars, reimagining a turbulent turning point in American history through a cockeyed contemporary lens... The wonder of Ms. Parks's achievement is how smoothly she blends the high and the low, the serious and the humorous, the melodramatic and the grittily realistic." --Charles Isherwood,
New York Times "Suzan-Lori Parks's stunning new drama is that rare work of art: one that bears the heavy burden of its subject matter--the peculiar institution of American slavery-- but that carries it lightly... Parks brings the full force of her dramatic power. She both elevates her themes with echoes of classic literature, while at the same time doubling down on comedy... This is serious work that is seriously entertaining." --Thom Geier,
Entertainment Weekly "The best new play of the year... It is bold, hugely entertaining, moving and thrillingly ambitious. Suzan-Lori Parks bids fair to create a sprawling multi-part epic to plant alongside August Wilson's monumental Century Cycle, one of the great achievements in theater history. Parts 4 through 9 (or more?) can't come fast enough." --Michael Giltz,
Huffington Post "Suzan-Lori Parks may reach back to the ancient Greeks for references and structure, but her play delivers an in-themoment gut punch.
Father Comes Home from the Wars is an insightful, poetic, often heartbreaking look at the devastations of war and slavery and the complications of freedom." --Robert Feldberg,
Bergen Record "One of the most provocative playwrights we have." --Linda Winer,
Newsday "Can one-third of something already be a masterpiece? Seems like it to me... People long for stories that engage the deepest possible issues in the most gripping possible ways.
Father Comes Home from the Wars is one of those
stories--or maybe more than one." --Jesse Green,
New York "Brilliant, beautiful . . . This haunting work is funny and tragic, whimsical and lacerating, poetic and poignant... If Parks can sustain her sprawling project at this level as it moves forward, there's every reason to hope it will ultimately become no less significant and emotionally resonant an undertaking than August Wilson's ten-play Century Cycle." --David Rooney,
Hollywood Reporter "Parks's richest, most satisfying play... The real news isn't that Parks has hit the mark with a complex and ambitious work--she undoubtedly has. It's that the playful spirit of her best work turns out to be alive and well." --Tom Sellar,
Village Voice "Suzan-Lori Parks has finally arrived at classical proportions: her Civil War triptych is built along the sharp, symmetrical lines of Greek tragedy and Homeric epic... The language is poetic and formal, a modified nineteenth-century slave idiom, imbued with Parks's improvisatory, jazzy irreverence... After decades in which Parks encouraged us to get lost in the holes of history, she's playing where theater began: with song, story, ritual and catharsis." --David Cote,
Time Out New York "Provocative and rich... earthy and irreverently funny, neither pompous tragedy nor Ken Burns-type reenactment." --Elisabeth Vincentelli,
New York Post
