Yale Repertory Theatre closes it’s mostly terrific season with Furlough’s Paradise, a well-acted but often overwritten and produced new drama by a.k. payne (sic). In a season that included stellar revivals of both Hedda Gabler and Rhinoceros, the contemporary 2-hander may not quite measure up to those levels, but is still worth seeing.
Set in 2017 in “A Great Migration City” which, according to Wikipedia, is an urban center primarily in the Northern, Midwestern, or Western United States, that saw a massive influx of Black Americans fleeing the rural South between 1910 and 1970. These cities became hubs of industrial labor, new culture, and political activism for over six million migrants escaping Jim Crow segregation and seeking economic opportunity. This is important to consider as Furlough’s Paradise opens and introduces its African-American characters, Mina (Tiffany McLarty) and Sade (Lauren F. Walker). They are cousins who have an uneasy reconciliation over the death of Sade’s mother. Sade is also on a 3-day furlough from prison.
Furlough’s Paradise spends those three days with the cousins as they bicker and bond over shared memories of growing up with parental trauma at their cores. The playwright also adds lots of significant (I guess) but over-the-top dream sequences and weird motifs suggesting…well, I’m not really sure. The play opens very dramatically and oddly, with both cousins in strange costuming and head pieces which they slowly rip away (shedding their skins?). It’s both an effective and head-scratcher of an opening, but then the play gets down to telling the women’s stories, which is more or less straight-forward and familiar.
Both McLarty and Walker are superlative sparring partners. Even when the author’s writing bogs down with repetition or stylized weirdness, the women never flail. McLarty represses years of pain with subtle nuance while Walker rages at their shared history, resentful of what she perceives as Mina’s privileged life, though they both grew up together on the same street. Even when the play works against them, these actors shine throughout, coming to a cathartic conclusion that will not leave you unmoved.
Director abigail jean-baptiste (sic) has staged effectively and keeps the 95 minute running time (without intermission) fairly tight. I found the scenic design (by Anthony Robles) accomplished but odd (there’s that word again!), with a bookcase that seemed to alternate as Mia’s bed and a working sink situated directly at the front door. The busy and often baffling projections are by Wiktor Freifeld with non-stop lighting by Alan C. Edwards. But the actors are the thing here and, ultimately, the real reason to pay Furlough’s Paradise a visit.
Furlough’s Paradise continues at Yale Repertory Theatre, 1120 Chapel Street, New Haven, Connecticut through May 16. For further information or ticket reservations call the theatre box office at: 203.432.1234 or visit: www.yalerep.org.
Tom Holehan is one of the founders of the Connecticut Critics Circle, a frequent contributor to WPKN Radio’s “State of the Arts” program and the Stratford Crier and former Artistic Director of Stratford’s Square One Theatre Company. He welcomes comments at: tholehan@yahoo.com. His reviews and other theatre information can be found on the Connecticut Critics Circle website: www.ctcritics.org.
