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Los Angeles Times
28-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
‘Furlough's Paradise' imagines utopia for two Black cousins on a quest for liberty
Playwright a.k. payne, who studied under Geffen Playhouse Artistic Director Tarell Alvin McCraney at Yale, chooses not to capitalize their name. They (note the choice of pronoun) don't wish to have their identity determined by suspect structures. This biographical information is pertinent to payne's 'Furlough's Paradise,' which won the 2025 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and is now having its West Coast premiere at the Geffen Playhouse. The play, a two-hander directed by Tinashe Kajese-Bolden, concerns two bracingly intelligent Black cousins who grew up together but whose lives have diverged. On the surface, not much connects these characters, but surfaces can mislead. Once as close as siblings, these cousins are trying in their different ways to imagine a world that will allow them to discover themselves outside of inherited assumptions and oppressive hierarchies. Mina (Kacie Rogers), a graduate of an Ivy League school, works for Google and lives with her white girlfriend, Chelsea, in Los Angeles. Sade (DeWanda Wise), whose name is pronounced shah-day, like the singer, has been granted a weekend furlough from prison to attend the funeral of her mother. They have not seen each since Sade was sent to jail. Mina's father died during this period, and she now keeps a small apartment in her hometown, a kind of safe house that allows her to commune with her past and escape from the endless striving of California. (The location is unnamed but described in the program as a U.S. Great Migration city in late 2017, so perhaps Pittsburgh, where the playwright has roots.) The death of Sade's mother, the twin of Mina's father, is an occasion for a double mourning. But it's also an opportunity for a double rebirth. Mina and Sade are witnesses not only to each other but also to the conditions that formed and deformed their dreams. 'Furlough's Paradise' is a small play that expands outward to the social and metaphysical worlds, not unlike McCraney's 'The Brothers Size,' a palpable influence. Projection designers Yee Eun Nam and Elizabeth Barrett create a kaleidoscopic background on Chika Shimizu's pied-à-terre set. With help from Pablo Santiago's lighting and Cricket S. Myers' sound design, the production magnifies in cinematic fashion the inner lives of the characters. This lyrical drama, choreographed by Dell Howlett, floats at times like a movement-theater piece reaching for the heavens. The acting is grounded in realism but the writing refuses to keep the characters under lock and key. Life may have thrown up walls but nothing can block their yearning. What does liberty mean and how can it be lived in an unfree world? (The word 'liberty' is projected onto the set along with other thematically relevant vocabulary at the start of the play.) Mina shares her dream of raising children outside of the fixed binaries of gender. Sade reveals the utopia she and her girlfriend, along with other fellow inmates, have been imagining, a collective portrait of a peaceful haven for 'free formerly incarcerated Black girls.' The cousins are content to spend the weekend holed up with each other, sorting through the past and measuring the distance between them. Costume designer Celeste Jennings illustrates their differences through clothing choices that reflect Sade's more marginalized status and Mina's more assimilated reality. Mina is surprised that Sade isn't more eager to exploit her weekend out of jail, but Sade relishes the freedom to just be. Accustomed to not having options, she's perhaps better able to appreciate the quiet togetherness of being holed up in her cousin's apartment. They watch TV and movies, eat cereal, play music and resurrect the cast of characters from their youth. August Wilson made it his mission to put the rituals of Black life onstage, to give representation to the daily customs of a people who had been denied visibility in mainstream culture. Payne follows suit, though the references in 'Furlough's Paradise' are largely from pop culture ('The Fresh Prince of Bel Air,' 'The Proud Family' and 'The Cheetah Girls') and the name-checking can sometimes seem slightly pandering, a playwright pushing easy buttons. But the play digs deep into the challenge of shaping a life into something that doesn't feel like a betrayal. Mina resents when Sade harps on the inequities of their childhoods. She thinks her cousin is making excuses for some bad choices. But Sade reminds Mina that small differences in parental belief and imagination can make a world of difference. Mina's father flouted strictures; Sade's mother subjugated herself to them — that is, until Sade went to jail on a serious felony and compassion for her daughter awakened her long-dormant maternal loyalty. 'Furlough's Paradise' makes the case that character isn't defined by elite education or criminal record. (The exact nature of Sade's crime goes unstated.) Our identities are a complicated calculus of opportunity and challenge. If being alone is the eternal problem, as Sade and Mina seem to acknowledge, love, in all its gnarly reality, is the only way to be truly seen. The kinetic staging, while keeping the action from becoming claustrophobic, sometimes oversteps the mark. The skips in time that occur in the play are unnecessarily italicized. The choreography is refreshing but might be more so with a little more restraint. What distinguishes payne as a rising talent is the breadth of human understanding that makes the characters of 'Furlough's Paradise' seem like old friends by the end of the drama. Rogers' Mina and Wise's Sade are so singularly and contrastingly themselves that it's not clear how they will ever reconcile their versions of the past. But this reunion catalyzes their desire to connect the dots that constitute their parallel lives. 'Furlough's Paradise' makes you care deeply about what will happen to Mina and Sade once the authorities come to collect Sade. I left the theater wishing not only the playwright a safe journey but also the play's characters.
Los Angeles Times
17-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
The freedoms of a.k. payne's award-winning abolition play ‘Furlough's Paradise,' onstage and off
Among the notes included in the 'Furlough's Paradise' script is an etymology of the word 'furlough' — as in, 'permission, liberty granted to do something.' Its various definitions throughout the history of language make clear that, whether by going away, retreating from or abstaining from having to do with, to leave is, essentially, to allow to survive. This idea is at the core of a.k. payne's moving two-hander, which stars DeWanda Wise and Kacie Rogers as estranged cousins — one on a three-day furlough from prison, another an Ivy League graduate on a break from her tech job — who reunite in their hometown for a funeral. They begin to process their conflicting memories, clarify their respective resentments, share their dreams of freedom and, in the safety of each other's company, they each allow themselves to let go of everything to just be who they are, wholly and fully, alongside the one person in the world who sees them in their entirety. The West Coast premiere of 'Furlough's Paradise' — which just won the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the prestigious international award that honors women+ playwrights — is directed by Tinashe Kajese-Bolden and runs through May 18 at the Geffen Playhouse. Between rehearsals, payne tells The Times about the real-life inspirations for these onstage cousins, the necessity of a choreographer for this production and the lessons learned from their graduate school professor, Geffen Playhouse artistic director Tarell Alvin McCraney. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. What inspired this play? The play first was conceived when I was in grad school, but I was thinking about it for years before then, without the language for it. The initial impulse came from my own curiosity around the ways that incarceration impacts families. Where I'm from, everybody who is Black in our city has a reference point to the Allegheny County Jail, which is in the middle of Pittsburgh. My earliest memories are writing letters to family members who were incarcerated; as a young person, seeing family who was in that place transformed how I saw the world. I also wanted to write a play that was inspired by the relationship between my cousin and I. We're both only children; we're almost siblings. And though the play traffics realism and has an illusion of realism, I'm really passionate about it not being a living room play; it's a play about the Afro-surreal and the ways that Black life is always a little bit askew, like our experience of it doesn't always match the way people perceive it or understand it. Who are these two characters to you? Frederick Douglass talks about being free in form versus free in fact — the idea of seeking a freedom in your mind and how you see the world, and the fact that systems of oppression and power don't get all of us because we're able to imagine alternative ways to exist. Both of these characters are wrestling with real instances of denials of freedoms, and I want this play to invite us to see the ways that these different systems have impacted both of them. Because Sade's body is physically incarcerated, she really fights for her mind to be free. She stands on business, she speaks truth and names things as they are, and she doesn't shy away from that. There's something honorable about her absolute refusal to lie or cheat, even in the midst of what this world has deemed criminal, and the ways in which people who have committed crimes are not always seen in their full humanity or in their integrity. That's why Sade is so clear about what her dreams are. I wanted to really center that in the play because it's important to listen to folks who have existed inside and honor the dreams of those who are most affected by these systems. Mina is trying to be free in many different ways. The life she's lived has colonized her mind, her body, everything, and she's fighting to let herself feel comfortable in a space for a few days. She can't even find the language for what her dreams are because she's trying to free her tongue from these institutions. So though the play started as a love letter to a lot of my family who've been affected by incarceration, I wanted to also draw a love letter to versions of myself and my friends who have been in academic institutions, and have really suffered as Black and brown people and people of color in these spaces. What do you hope audiences experience during these three days with Mina and Sade? Sometimes it's hard to sit in the rehearsal room with this play, because I want another world for these characters; I want to just get them out of this room and get them somewhere else, away from everything. Who were they before all the stuff they put on each other, and how can they be able to just not have to carry all of that? To me, that's evocative of what abolition means; it's the capacity to exist together, and to break apart the rigid ways that we contain and police ourselves. So my hope is that audiences watch the play and want to create alternative spaces for Black people to actually be and exist and care for each other, and cherish being present with each other without being confined. Geffen Playhouse's artistic director Tarell Alvin McCraney, also the chair of playwriting at Yale School of Drama, described you as 'one of the most powerful writers I've encountered in my time as a professor.' What was it like to be taught by him? Tarell is an extraordinary teacher and mentor, as well as artist, of course. I started at Yale School of Drama in 2019 — I had gone straight through from undergrad, which was really difficult because of the elitism, the white supremacy and all the things. Tarell was extraordinary at crafting an oasis and fugitive space within an institution that honestly had caused a lot of harm for so many people who looked like me. Grad school had its challenges, but the community I found in the playwriting department was such a gift. Our entire nine-person cohort was students of color, and Tarell created a horizontal leadership model in the program that allowed me to feel supported as an artist and a full person, where you can really listen to your own voice as a playwright and trust that voice. He created such fertile ground for exploration and play. 'Furlough's Paradise' made its world premiere at Atlanta's Alliance Theatre last year. What did you learn from that staging that you're integrating into this one? One of the biggest things is embodiment — it's an endless question and the conundrum of being a Black writer in America and writing in English. I love this quote by Ntozake Shange: 'i cant count the number of times i have viscerally wanted to attack deform n maim the language that i was taught to hate myself in.' That feels so relevant to how I think about language — there's the constant awareness that this is a colonial language that my people were forced to speak, and so much that we do and experience just cannot fit into English. So in this rendition, I've been thinking more about the body. Mina and Sade keep doing these comparisons [of each other] where, in all of that language, there's no space to actually fully see both of them. But in these dream sequences at night, we see what they're wrestling with outside of language. My hope is that those allow us to go to the limits of language, and see what our bodies do when language isn't enough. There were movement consultants for a few gestural beats in other renditions, but having choreographers from day one of this process has been incredible. How did you first start writing plays? I grew up doing some musicals and operas in Pittsburgh, and my mom is a music teacher so I was always in her choirs. When I went to an arts magnet school, I majored in literary arts, and I wrote my first play in seventh grade. I entered it in City Theatre's Young Playwrights Contest and I remember being in rehearsals for my play and thinking, 'I love making stuff, being with people and imagining stuff together. I just want to do this forever.' Theater making for me is not just about my own little independent vision; there's so much collaboration that goes into a show and I love making space on the page for other artists. In undergrad, I directed a lot because I didn't see the spaces that I wanted to create work in and I didn't feel comfortable acting. I didn't really feel there were structures for the work I wanted to write. But I fell in love with the practice of making theater and building ensemble to support that — specifically Black theater, the histories of Black theater and the ways that Black theater artists have imagined alternate worlds. What structures can theater institutions prioritize to encourage more of the work you want to make? Institutions are trying to improve things — even Tarell being here [at the Geffen] and being deeply committed to the work of Black and brown people and bringing in voices that are not traditionally in white American theater spaces. But I find it critical to create alternative spaces entirely, because there's always going to be a limit to what institutions that are not owned by us can do. I love the concepts of fugitivity and how people have created spaces that are not always visible to the institutional or public eye, that go deeper and aren't necessarily trying to be big or fit into the systems. I wonder if there are ways that larger institutions can support many different kinds of theater making, like pouring into smaller artist collectives in a way that enables them to create with autonomy. I'm also obsessed with maroonage, a Black cultural tradition in which people who were enslaved would escape to the mountains and form independent communities. In a theatrical tradition, what does it mean to create our own stuff and center our own gaze in our making of things? I've been building a theater collective in line with these things, and it's Black folks who gather by bodies of water and just make experimental stuff. This past summer, we gathered in New Rochelle and did double Dutch lessons, clowning classes and Pilates. Spaces like that are so critical to creating community and ensemble, which is hard when working on a small play like 'Furlough's Paradise.' So for the next renditions on the East Coast next year, I'm hoping to gather all the artists working on it [at the various theaters] and spend three days mapping out freedom dreams.
Los Angeles Times
15-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Inside Geffen Playhouse's 2025-26 season: Athol Fugard, Pearl Cleage and multiple world premieres
So far, Tarell Alvin McCraney's inaugural season at the helm of the Geffen Playhouse has spanned a muscular revival of 'The Brothers Size,' a co-production of 'Noises Off' and a starry staging of 'Waiting for Godot.' Unbeknownst to the public, the playwright's tenure at the city's most prominent Westside theater has also included workshops of nearly every production scheduled for the 2025-26 season. It's an effort intended to cement the Geffen as a lab for artistic development and a platform for creative experimentation and development of new works. 'It was a thought that became a dream that came to fruition,' the theater's artistic director told The Times last week. 'To have more time with the plays, and the writers and directors, beforehand — that may not seem unique, but so much of the development process [in the industry] has gone away, especially in the regions where theaters tend to program a play that's already been done. They do the work in the rehearsal process, but that period of time is so focused on the production itself. 'Especially with world premieres, I was like, 'We gotta slow down, we need time for writers to really get under the hood to the juicy part, where they can explore ideas or try things or figure out how something might work,' ' he continued. 'We're making sure that, for these artists, you're feeling nourished and getting to know us as a producing entity, we're getting to know you, and we're creating, hopefully, lifelong relationships in this way. It's kept us really busy but it feels very much like we're harvesting some great things and then sharing it with our audiences and community, and we plan to keep doing that.' The Geffen's 2025-26 season, unveiled to the theater's donors and subscribers on Monday night, begins with the world premiere of 'Am I Roxie?' (Sept. 3 to Oct. 5), written and performed by Roxana Ortega. In the one-woman show, directed by Bernardo Cubría in the Gil Cates Theater, Ortega navigates the chaos of her mother's mental decline with honesty, humor and strength of spirit, all while playing everything from a mermaid-obsessed aunt to a prickly Sherpa. Next is the world premiere of Rudi Goblen's 'Littleboy/Littleman' (Oct. 1 to Nov. 2), a tale of two Nicaraguan brothers — one a steady telemarketer, the other an impulsive poet — who clash over their visions of the American Dream. The production, directed by Nancy Medina in the Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater, blends poetry, live music and ritual in its exploration of brotherhood and belonging. 'No first outing of anything should be its last, you always want it to be the start of something,' said McCraney of the season's world premieres. 'As a writer, I know that a first production can be hampered down if it's overproduced or if it's pushed in a way that it doesn't have more space to grow. These pieces [in the season] have potential for growth, so we're putting them with directors who love new work and setting these plays up for a kind of expansion, because we want other theaters to see these first productions and then want to be part of that growth as well.' The Gil Cates Theater then welcomes the West Coast premiere of Douglas Lyons' 'Table 17' (Nov. 5 to Dec. 7), the romantic comedy in which a previously engaged couple reunites at a restaurant to, casually but carefully, untangle the past. Zhailon Levingston again directs the production, having also helmed its twice-extended, off-Broadway world-premiere run last year. The new year kicks off with the world premiere of Beth Hyland's 'Sylvia Sylvia Sylvia' (Feb. 4 to March 8, 2026), about a novelist who, grappling with writer's block and her husband's rising fame, seeks solace in the iconic Boston apartment once inhabited by Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Directed by Jo Bonney in the Gil Cates Theater, the tragicomic thriller explores creativity, obsession and the cost of creating art. The season continues with the Los Angeles premiere of Sara Porkalob's 'Dragon Mama' (March 4 to April 12, 2026), following this season's hit run of her tour-de-force 'Dragon Lady.' Andrew Russell directs this installment of the Dragon Cycle in the Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater; this time, the solo show with music centers on Porkalob's mother who, forced to raise her four siblings, is presented with an opportunity to chase her own dreams. 'Sara brought a level of intimacy with our audiences with her production of 'Dragon Lady' that we don't want to let go of,' said McCraney, who remains committed to programming Porkalob's entire trilogy for Los Angeles. 'We want our audiences to come in with a familiarity of, 'She's going to talk directly to us, make jokes to us and sing with us.' ' Then, a revival of Athol Fugard's deeply personal drama ' 'Master Harold'…and the Boys' (April 8 to May 10, 2026) takes over the Gil Cates Theater. Set in a South African tea shop during apartheid, the Tony-nominated play centers on the son of the shop's white owner, the two Black waiters who helped raise him and the charged conversations that challenge their fragile, shared bond. 'It's a play that I've loved and has been on my mind, and the moment we looked into the rights, we heard of Athol passing away,' said McCraney of the playwright, who died last month. 'It was a sign that we have to do this very important play, the moment of the play is something we need to remember, and it'll allow us to have deep conversations about the harder questions in our society — who we are in relation to each other, and how this system of oppression made it impossible for people to be loving to each other, because you need freedom to have love.' The season concludes with the West Coast premiere of Pearl Cleage's 'Angry, Raucous, and Shamelessly Gorgeous' (June 10 to July 12, 2026), a sharp-witted and soulful comedy about a seasoned actress who, while launching a comeback, finds herself clashing a new generation of artists and activists. LaTanya Richardson Jackson directs the staging in the Gil Cates Theater, produced in association with Black Rebirth Collective and made possible in part by support from Cast Iron Entertainment. 'The first five to 10 minutes of the play pisses me off, tells me about myself and makes me see through another perspective in a way that I feel so nourished by,' said McCraney. 'She wrote a play that talks to us, artists who have had careers, and how we need to make room for folks who are online native, who look at the world ever so differently but have so many creative instincts that can only help us. We are a city full of artists and full of generational artists, and because it is so fun and succinct and focused on performance, we think it'll be a delicious way to end our season.'
Euronews
11-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Euronews
American playwright ak payne wins Susan Smith Blackburn Prize
American playwright ak payne has won this year's Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, an international prize that recognises women+ writing theatre in English. ADVERTISEMENT Founded in 1978, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize is the longest-running prize in English theatre for female and nonbinary playwrights. American writer ak payne has won the 2025 prize for their play "Furlough's Paradise", which they describe as a 'lyrical journey about grief, home, and survival.' "Furlough's Paradise" was nominated by Atlanta's Alliance Theatre, which premiered the play in 2024. Director Tinashe Kajese-Bolden is now set to take it to the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles. Telling the story of two cousins, Sade and Mina, the play focuses on their relationship as they meet at the funeral of their mother and aunt while Sade is on a three-day furlough from prison and Mina is away from her high-flying career. Through these two cousins, the play examines what it means to be a Black woman in today's America. At the announcement ceremony, payne said: 'I am so grateful to receive this award and join a list of some of my favourite writers whose plays have shaken how I understand the world and who have made it possible'. Kai Heath and Asha Basha Duniani in the Alliance Theatre production Greg Mooney As the overall winner, payne received $25,000 (€23,000), as well as a signed print by renowned artist Willem de Kooning, created especially for the prize. 'At this moment in our history as a country, and as a Prize which honours women, trans and non-binary writers, we must acknowledge the very real threats that are being aimed at our hard-won freedoms. We must remind ourselves of the power of our voices, and the special magic we create when we lift them at the theatre. Every voice on our stage tonight deserves to be honoured, celebrated and heard,' Leslie Swackhamer executive director of the prize said. payne has been a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn prize twice before. This year, the prize chose to award two special commendations and $10,000 (€9,200) to "49 Days" by Haruna Lee and "An Oxford Man" by Else Went. Six other finalists also received prizes of $5,000 (€4,600). Playwright ak payne Susan Smith Blackburn Prize Past Winners of the Prize include Annie Baker, Caryl Churchill, Lucy Kirkwood, and Lucy Prebble. Last year's Winner, "1536" by Ava Pickett, is set to premiere in Europe at the Almeida Theatre in London in May, directed by Olivier-winner Lindsey Turner.
Los Angeles Times
10-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Review: ‘Noises Off,' Michael Frayn's ingenious farce, doesn't have to be perfect to succeed
As modern farces go, Michael Frayn's 'Noises Off' is not only one of the funniest but may also be the most elegantly conceived. The play, in revival at the Geffen Playhouse in a co-production with Steppenwolf Theatre Company, is a daunting physical challenge to perform. An Olympic track and field team looking to raise its cardio fitness might consider adding a rehearsal of 'Noises Off' to its training regimen. With the precision of a geometric proof, Frayn built his farce on the back of another. His play revolves around an invented sex comedy called 'Nothing On' that's about to launch its provincial British tour. The company of performers assembled to perform this hoary property consists of has-beens, wannabes, klutzes and martyred veterans. Everything that can go wrong, goes wrong. Doors refuse to open, lines are bungled, props aren't where they should be and cues are missed. But what tilts this ill-starred production into epic disaster is the backstage drama that breaks out when romantic jealousy spreads throughout the company. 'Noises Off' is the grandfather of a genre that has become newly popular through 'The Play That Goes Wrong' and its pratfalling cousins. But Frayn's work represents the gold standard of the form. Divided into three acts, 'Noises Off' provides three different experiences of 'Nothing On,' the theatrical claptrap the actors within the play are trying to survive. Act One consists of a stop and start dress rehearsal unfolding under the irascible gaze of the show's director, Lloyd Dallas (Rick Holmes). Act Two is set backstage a month into the tour, when conflicts emerge among company members, who have begun mimicking the rowdy libidinous antics of their characters. Act Three offers a performance at a point when nervous tension, romantic fury and artistic demoralization bring the production to a nervous breakdown. In imagining a theatrical bomb for the ages, Frayn wrote an indelible crowd-pleaser for the modern repertory. High up on my list of the funniest nights I've had in the theater is the 2001 Broadway revival of 'Noises Off,' directed by Jeremy Sams and featuring a nonpareil ensemble that included Patti LuPone, Faith Prince, Richard Easton and a sublimely humorous Katie Finneran, who won a Tony Award for playing Brooke, the clueless young actress who flits about with a stupefied smile until she loses her contact lens and then stumbles helplessly through the country manor set of 'Nothing On.' The opening night audience at the Geffen Playhouse seemed enraptured by the hilarity. I love the play somewhat more than I do this production. My expectations may have been too high. Not that I didn't get caught up in the comic mayhem. The revival, directed by Anna D. Shapiro, proceeds with propulsive giddiness. Only a statue could resist laughing. Yet the casting struck me in spots as counterintuitive. I was left with the impression of an ensemble company that had allocated roles based on who was available or perhaps overdue for a plum part. Shapiro may have had her pick of talent inside or outside Steppenwolf's revered ensemble, but some of the choices seemed a bit of a stretch. Dotty (Ora Jones), who is trying to resurrect her career by investing and starring in 'Nothing On,' and Garry Lejeune (David Lind), a spectacularly inarticulate and volatile actor who's having an affair with Dotty, are an unlikely couple. But a mismatched Jones and Lind make the characters' tempestuous romance seem beyond the bounds of farcical absurdity. Stretching matters further, Garry plays a character in 'Nothing On' who's carrying on an affair with the brainless floozie played by Brooke (Amanda Fink). Their hanky-panky is foiled, but the attempted assignation seems completely random. James Vincent Meredith plays Frederick Fellowes, an actor incessantly peppering the director with questions about his character's motivation. Yet everything about his hammy manner suggests an old-fashioned thespian in love with the sound of his own voice and utterly oblivious to method psychology. I could go on, but let me instead praise Holmes in the role of the fed-up director. Sitting in the audience during the first act rehearsal, Holmes' Lloyd grudgingly offers words of encouragement while seething with impatience. Herding cats is clearly not his strong suit. He'd like to lay the blame on his second-rate company, but he can't escape his own role in the ensuing fiasco. While conspicuously having an affair with Brooke, Lloyd perpetrates heartbreak backstage. Poppy (an appropriately mousy Vaneh Assadourian) is madly in love with him and has important news to share, if only he'd give her a minute of his time. Poppy is one of the stage managers who, along with Max Stewart's convincingly overworked Tim, is trying to stem the backstage chaos — an impossible feat that not even the Little Dutch Boy could manage. Steppenwolf Theatre co-artistic director Audrey Francis brings a casual grace to her portrayal of Belinda Blair, the blithe peacemaker of the troupe who knows all the company's secrets and spills them every chance she gets. Francis Guinan humorously captures the soused disregard of Selsdon Mowbray, who bungles his every entrance and has to be monitored for furtive tippling. If you haven't seen a great production of 'Noises Off,' then you might think the play's reputation is inflated. The staginess of this revival doesn't always feel fresh. Actors, even when licensed to go into over-the-top mode, still must hit their marks and strive for originality. The scale of the job might be too much — physically — for the Geffen Playhouse. This is especially apparent in Act Two, when the cramped stage renders the comic choreography smudgy. Act One and Three take place in the country house that scenic designer Todd Rosenthal has conjured as a piece of Merrie Olde England real estate with dark wooden finishes and a bevy of farcical doors. Act Two, however, gives us an alternative backstage view of a matinee performance of 'Nothing On,' and this is where the trouble begins. The vivid design scheme struggles to keep up with the farce's logistical demands. The narrowness of the playing area makes it difficult for the actors to do more than offer a stylized approximation of the slapstick ballet that Frayn has engineered. The unflagging exertion of Shapiro's company is ultimately more impressive than the execution. The simultaneity of the play's two levels gets lost in the comic mayhem of Act Two. Act Three, which brings a performance of 'Nothing On' to utter collapse, doesn't quite reach the lunatic heights that Frayn intends. But by this point exhaustion has set in for actors and audience alike. Still, 'Noises Off' offers comic balm for anxious minds. The production will no doubt gain in precision as it works out its kinks. And theatergoers new to the play will encounter, whether they recognize it or not, one of the great modern English language farces.
