A moving look at the journey to save as many as one can and the choices involved. Powerful and well done.

What's great about SHELTERED is how often it remembers its characters' complex humanity -- doubt, hope, anger, eagerness, and regret all pulsate throughout the play with a fine touch. Knowing that the genre of WWII and European migration is familiar territory, Alix Sobler's play makes the smart choice to focus on the microcosm of what it means to sacrifice and how the notion to aid in another's plight is only the start of your own. The Kirschs are not only noble, but flawed, funny, and strikingly realistic. SHELTERED builds up a promise, then delivers in unexpected, beautifully subtle ways.

Sheltered starts off as a delightful period comedy of manners, then just keeps deepening until you find yourself staring fully into the abyss. One of those rare period plays that succeeds in making you see both the past and the present in a new light. A devastating play about the choices we make and the sacrifices that catastrophe forces us to face. It manages to be funny and smart, charming and humane all the way through, taking the reader on a journey that left me gasping.