Review: Dynamic “Furlough’s Paradise” explodes with emotion
- Anita W. Harris
- Apr 29
- 4 min read
Stories about African American women often explore traumas that have plagued the community since times of slavery – lost children, ruptured homes, unwed motherhood, incarceration, racial code-switching, money and family legacy.
Though these themes necessarily run through “Furlough’s Paradise” as it centers on two Black women, the play is anything but expected. Instead, it’s a dynamic, engaging portrayal of the young women actively grappling with where they’ve been and dreaming of where they intend to go — spiriting us right along with them.
Written by a.k. payne [sic] and directed by Tinashe Kajese-Bolden, the play is set in the urban apartment of Mina (Kacie Rogers) during three days in late 2017 while her cousin Sade (DeWanda Wise) visits. Sade is on furlough from prison to attend the funeral of her mother, who is Mina’s aunt and the twin sister of her own father who passed.
Though they grew up together as girls, Mina’s and Sade’s lives diverged at some point, with Mina heading off to an Ivy League school (unnamed, though playwright payne went to Yale) and Sade eventually landing in prison (though we know not for what crime), where she helps teach math to other inmates and reads the books that are permitted.
The apartment —a place Mina keeps in her hometown (a Great Migration city according to the playbill) though she lives and works in Los Angeles — is richly realized by scenic designer Chika Shimizu, accented with projections by Yee Eun Nam and Elizabeth Barrett, and lighting by Pablo Santiago.
As the play opens, projected digital lettering tells us it’s “Day 1” and defines terms like “furlough” and “liberty.” Water splashing against a shower door is creatively rendered through video projection, too, but also the women’s recurring nightmares are made shockingly visceral through lighting changes, projected images and sudden booming sounds (designed by Cricket S. Myers). In these dreams, the women run, battle invisible demons and protectively hide themselves (choreography by Dell Howlett). The play is thus physically fluid, complementing the fluidity of payne’s provocative dialogue.
At first somewhat formal and distant after the funeral, having not seen each other for some years, Mina and Sade circle one another warily. Mina plays jazz records and tells Sade she got her favorite cereal, Cookie Crisps. Sade calls Mina out for playing those records that belonged to her father and reacts incredulously as Mina describes her white girlfriend Chelsea. Together they watch reruns of shows like “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” and Disney Channel’s “The Proud Family” and “The Cheetah Girls” that they grew up on.
As the days flow one into the next, the women share memories growing up with their respective parents (projected black-and-white portraits make them seem like a distant past) and their experiences since then, including Mina’s extreme anxiety from feeling like an outsider at her mostly white college, and Sade having to find her own way in the world with her mother too busy working. Mina also describes just wanting someone to hold her, starting to realize maybe that’s not Chelsea. And Sade reveals she had a baby girl at 18, naming her Paradise, but having the child taken away when she went to prison.
The actors embody their roles with lively grace. Rogers infuses Mina with warmth and vulnerability, telling Sade she keeps the hometown apartment because it’s the only place in the world she can freely speak, cry or just be herself. Wise brings a lithe toughness and tell-it-like-it-is humor to her Sade, but also a childlike wonder. Sade tells Mina how she and her fellow inmates dream of forming a utopia when they get out of prison, a place where they can be fully free, almost like their own country.
True freedom is what these young women seek in different ways. As Black girls coming up with seemingly the only role models besides their parents found in books or shows with African American characters, Mina and Sade end up less than fully equipped to handle the challenges of life in the world by themselves. But during the three days, Mina and Sade rediscover that they have each other to reinforce their own resilience.
A joyous performance of a Cheetah Girls song captures the reunion of their girlhood selves, though to get the full emotional impact of that scene, which unfolds playfully under a billowy tent with backlighting, it might help to have been a pre-teen in 2003.
Winner of the 2025 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, “Furlough’s Paradise” offers a fresh take on difficult topics of legacy, race and gender as inflected through these young women. Hearing them speak so forthrightly and openly on how it feels to be them and how they aspire to a freedom that is their birthright as humans is moving, engaging and, at times, transcendent.
“Furlough’s Paradise” continues at the Geffen Playhouse’s Gil Cates Theater, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Los Angeles, through May 18, with shows Wednesdays through Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. For tickets and information, call the box office at (310) 208-2028 or visit GeffenPlayhouse.org. Run time is 1 hour and 20 minutes with no intermission.
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