Playwright a.ok. payne, who studied underneath Geffen Playhouse Creative Director Tarell Alvin McCraney at Yale, chooses to not capitalize their identify. They (notice the selection of pronoun) don’t want to have their id decided by suspect buildings.
This biographical info is pertinent to payne’s “Furlough’s Paradise,” which received the 2025 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and is now having its West Coast premiere on the Geffen Playhouse. The play, a two-hander directed by Tinashe Kajese-Bolden, issues two bracingly clever Black cousins who grew up collectively however whose lives have diverged.
On the floor, not a lot connects these characters, however surfaces can mislead. As soon as as shut as siblings, these cousins try of their alternative ways to think about a world that can enable them to find themselves outdoors of inherited assumptions and oppressive hierarchies.
Mina (Kacie Rogers), a graduate of an Ivy League faculty, works for Google and lives along with her white girlfriend, Chelsea, in Los Angeles. Sade (DeWanda Smart), whose identify is pronounced shah-day, just like the singer, has been granted a weekend furlough from jail to attend the funeral of her mom.
They haven’t seen every since Sade was despatched to jail. Mina’s father died throughout this era, and he or she now retains a small residence in her hometown, a form of protected home that permits her to commune along with her previous and escape from the infinite striving of California. (The placement is unnamed however described in this system as a U.S. Nice Migration metropolis in late 2017, so maybe Pittsburgh, the place the playwright has roots.)
The loss of life of Sade’s mom, the dual of Mina’s father, is an event for a double mourning. Nevertheless it’s additionally a chance for a double rebirth. Mina and Sade are witnesses not solely to one another but in addition to the circumstances that fashioned and deformed their desires.
“Furlough’s Paradise” is a small play that expands outward to the social and metaphysical worlds, not not like McCraney’s “The Brothers Size,” a palpable affect.
Projection designers Yee Eun Nam and Elizabeth Barrett create a kaleidoscopic background on Chika Shimizu’s pied-à-terre set. With assist from Pablo Santiago’s lighting and Cricket S. Myers’ sound design, the manufacturing magnifies in cinematic trend the interior lives of the characters.
This lyrical drama, choreographed by Dell Howlett, floats at instances like a movement-theater piece reaching for the heavens. The performing is grounded in realism however the writing refuses to maintain the characters underneath lock and key. Life might have thrown up partitions however nothing can block their craving.
What does liberty imply and the way can or not it’s lived in an unfree world? (The phrase “liberty” is projected onto the set together with different thematically related vocabulary initially of the play.)
Mina shares her dream of elevating youngsters outdoors of the mounted binaries of gender. Sade reveals the utopia she and her girlfriend, together with different fellow inmates, have been imagining, a collective portrait of a peaceable haven for “free formerly incarcerated Black girls.”
The cousins are content material to spend the weekend holed up with one another, sorting by way of the previous and measuring the gap between them. Costume designer Celeste Jennings illustrates their variations by way of clothes selections that replicate Sade’s extra marginalized standing and Mina’s extra assimilated actuality.
Kacie Rogers, left, and DeWanda Smart in “Furlough’s Paradise” at Geffen Playhouse.
(Jeff Lorch)
Mina is shocked that Sade isn’t extra keen to take advantage of her weekend out of jail, however Sade relishes the liberty to simply be. Accustomed to not having choices, she’s maybe higher in a position to respect the quiet togetherness of being holed up in her cousin’s residence.
They watch TV and flicks, eat cereal, play music and resurrect the forged of characters from their youth. August Wilson made it his mission to place the rituals of Black life onstage, to provide illustration to the day by day customs of a individuals who had been denied visibility in mainstream tradition.
Payne follows swimsuit, although the references in “Furlough’s Paradise” are largely from popular culture (“The Fresh Prince of Bel Air,” “The Proud Family” and “The Cheetah Girls”) and the name-checking can generally appear barely pandering, a playwright pushing simple buttons. However the play digs deep into the problem of shaping a life into one thing that doesn’t really feel like a betrayal.
Mina resents when Sade harps on the inequities of their childhoods. She thinks her cousin is making excuses for some unhealthy selections.
However Sade reminds Mina that small variations in parental perception and creativeness could make a world of distinction. Mina’s father flouted strictures; Sade’s mom subjugated herself to them — that’s, till Sade went to jail on a critical felony and compassion for her daughter woke up her long-dormant maternal loyalty.
“Furlough’s Paradise” makes the case that character isn’t outlined by elite training or legal file. (The precise nature of Sade’s crime goes unspoken.) Our identities are an advanced calculus of alternative and problem. If being alone is the everlasting downside, as Sade and Mina appear to acknowledge, love, in all its gnarly actuality, is the one option to be actually seen.
The kinetic staging, whereas preserving the motion from turning into claustrophobic, generally oversteps the mark. The skips in time that happen within the play are unnecessarily italicized. The choreography is refreshing however is perhaps extra so with just a little extra restraint. What distinguishes payne as a rising expertise is the breadth of human understanding that makes the characters of “Furlough’s Paradise” seem to be outdated buddies by the top of the drama.
Rogers’ Mina and Smart’s Sade are so singularly and contrastingly themselves that it’s not clear how they’ll ever reconcile their variations of the previous. However this reunion catalyzes their need to attach the dots that represent their parallel lives.
“Furlough’s Paradise” makes you care deeply about what’s going to occur to Mina and Sade as soon as the authorities come to gather Sade. I left the theater wishing not solely the playwright a protected journey but in addition the play’s characters.
‘Furlough’s Paradise’
The place: Gil Cates Theater at Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., L.A.
When: 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Fridays, 3 and eight p.m. Saturdays, 2 and seven p.m. Sundays. Ends Could 18
Tickets: $45-$139 (topic to alter)
Contact: (310) 208-2028 or www.geffenplayhouse.org
Working time: 1 hour, 20 minutes (no intermission)
