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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
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.'
