'Furlough's Paradise' imagines utopia for two Black cousins on a quest for liberty

Playwright a.k. payne, who studied nether Geffen Playhouse Artistic Director Tarell Alvin McCraney astatine Yale, chooses not to capitalize their name. They (note the prime of pronoun) don’t privation to person their individuality determined by fishy structures.

This biographical accusation is pertinent to payne’s “Furlough’s Paradise,” which won the 2025 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and is present having its West Coast premiere astatine the Geffen Playhouse. The play, a two-hander directed by Tinashe Kajese-Bolden, concerns 2 bracingly intelligent Black cousins who grew up unneurotic but whose lives person diverged.

On the surface, not overmuch connects these characters, but surfaces tin mislead. Once arsenic adjacent arsenic siblings, these cousins are trying successful their antithetic ways to ideate a satellite that volition let them to observe themselves extracurricular of inherited assumptions and oppressive hierarchies.

Mina (Kacie Rogers), a postgraduate of an Ivy League school, works for Google and lives with her achromatic girlfriend, Chelsea, successful Los Angeles. Sade (DeWanda Wise), whose sanction is pronounced shah-day, similar the singer, has been granted a play furlough from situation to be the ceremonial of her mother.

They person not seen each since Sade was sent to jail. Mina’s begetter died during this period, and she present keeps a tiny flat successful her hometown, a benignant of harmless location that allows her to commune with her past and flight from the endless striving of California. (The determination is unnamed but described successful the programme arsenic a U.S. Great Migration metropolis successful precocious 2017, truthful possibly Pittsburgh, wherever the playwright has roots.)

The decease of Sade’s mother, the duplicate of Mina’s father, is an juncture for a treble mourning. But it’s besides an accidental for a treble rebirth. Mina and Sade are witnesses not lone to each different but besides to the conditions that formed and deformed their dreams.

“Furlough’s Paradise” is simply a tiny play that expands outward to the societal and metaphysical worlds, not dissimilar McCraney’s “The Brothers Size,” a palpable influence.

Projection designers Yee Eun Nam and Elizabeth Barrett make a kaleidoscopic inheritance connected Chika Shimizu’s pied-à-terre set. With assistance from Pablo Santiago’s lighting and Cricket S. Myers’ dependable design, the accumulation magnifies successful cinematic manner the interior lives of the characters.

This lyrical drama, choreographed by Dell Howlett, floats astatine times similar a movement-theater portion reaching for the heavens. The acting is grounded successful realism but the penning refuses to support the characters nether fastener and key. Life whitethorn person thrown up walls but thing tin artifact their yearning.

What does liberty mean and however tin it beryllium lived successful an unfree world? (The connection “liberty” is projected onto the acceptable on with different thematically applicable vocabulary astatine the commencement of the play.)

Mina shares her imagination of raising children extracurricular of the fixed binaries of gender. Sade reveals the utopia she and her girlfriend, on with different chap inmates, person been imagining, a corporate representation of a peaceful haven for “free formerly incarcerated Black girls.”

The cousins are contented to walk the play holed up with each other, sorting done the past and measuring the region betwixt them. Costume decorator Celeste Jennings illustrates their differences done covering choices that bespeak Sade’s much marginalized presumption and Mina’s much assimilated reality.

Kacie Rogers, left, and DeWanda Wise successful “Furlough’s Paradise” astatine Geffen Playhouse.

(Jeff Lorch)

Mina is amazed that Sade isn’t much anxious to exploit her play retired of jail, but Sade relishes the state to conscionable be. Accustomed to not having options, she’s possibly amended capable to admit the quiescent togetherness of being holed up successful her cousin’s apartment.

They ticker TV and movies, devour cereal, play euphony and resurrect the formed of characters from their youth. August Wilson made it his ngo to enactment the rituals of Black beingness onstage, to springiness practice to the regular customs of a radical who had been denied visibility successful mainstream culture.

Payne follows suit, though the references successful “Furlough’s Paradise” are mostly from popular civilization (“The Fresh Prince of Bel Air,” “The Proud Family” and “The Cheetah Girls”) and the name-checking tin sometimes look somewhat pandering, a playwright pushing casual buttons. But the play digs heavy into the situation of shaping a beingness into thing that doesn’t consciousness similar a betrayal.

Mina resents erstwhile Sade harps connected the inequities of their childhoods. She thinks her relative is making excuses for immoderate atrocious choices.

But Sade reminds Mina that tiny differences successful parental content and imaginativeness tin marque a satellite of difference. Mina’s begetter flouted strictures; Sade’s parent subjugated herself to them — that is, until Sade went to jailhouse connected a superior felony and compassion for her girl awakened her long-dormant maternal loyalty.

“Furlough’s Paradise” makes the lawsuit that quality isn’t defined by elite acquisition oregon transgression record. (The nonstop quality of Sade’s transgression goes unstated.) Our identities are a analyzable calculus of accidental and challenge. If being unsocial is the eternal problem, arsenic Sade and Mina look to acknowledge, love, successful each its gnarly reality, is the lone mode to beryllium genuinely seen.

The kinetic staging, portion keeping the enactment from becoming claustrophobic, sometimes oversteps the mark. The skips successful clip that hap successful the play are unnecessarily italicized. The choreography is refreshing but mightiness beryllium much truthful with a small much restraint. What distinguishes payne arsenic a rising endowment is the breadth of quality knowing that makes the characters of “Furlough’s Paradise” look similar aged friends by the extremity of the drama.

Rogers’ Mina and Wise’s Sade are truthful singularly and contrastingly themselves that it’s not wide however they volition ever reconcile their versions of the past. But this reunion catalyzes their tendency to link the dots that represent their parallel lives.

“Furlough’s Paradise” makes you attraction profoundly astir what volition hap to Mina and Sade erstwhile the authorities travel to cod Sade. I near the theatre wishing not lone the playwright a harmless travel but besides the play’s characters.