Review: FURLOUGH'S PARADISE at Theater Alliance

A common announcement at the outset of many productions is not only for the audience to silence cell phones but to avoid the unwrapping of hard candies. One of the many ways A.K.. Payne’s “Furlough’s Paradise” upends theatrical tradition is by providing a wrapped butterscotch on every patron’s seat, as the playwright’s recorded voice implores patrons to indulge in this nostalgic tactile and taste exercise, to unleash memories of a grandmother’s candy found at the bottom of a purse in some bygone family memory. (She also encourages connection and eye contact among the patrons). Thus rising the experience, who cares about any subsequent cacophony of crinkling sounds? 

It’s one of the experiments in “Furlough’s Paradise” at D.C.’s Theater Alliance that includes interludes of dance and abstract projections, spoken word interludes and trauma reproduced in conscious and unconscious states.

At its essence, “Fulough’s Paradise” is the story of two cousins, one an ostensible success, working in California at Google, returning to the pied-à-terre she keeps in D.C. to visit her ailing father, who recently died. The other is out on furlough from a high-security prison 100 miles away in order to attend own mother's memorial. 

So there’s issues to clear between the two women at the outset. How death arrangements for their respective parents differed. How each deals with grief. Did one make bad choices? Did the other sell out or end up spending their days making white people feel comfortable? 

Once the initial friction settles, they open up more about how their lives are actually going. Both have lesbian partners as it turns out, as ways to keep sane in an actual prison and in a corporate one. Eventually, they share their dreams for the future, which are essentially framed as visions of utopia. And their ways to get there, expressed in movement during dreams and  night terrors, often involves the flapping of wings and flying above it all.

There’s a heart of truth in "Furlough's Paradise" that beats strong despite the occasional off-ramps. Payne says she sometimes creates as a collage — picking observations from writing and scattering them in. She also says it’s a play in flux, which may change again before it’s finally published soon. 

In a perfect world, it will all coalesce into a work that could stand as extending the traditions of things like “for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf.” 

The strength of the Theater Alliance production, directed by Autumn Angelettie, is due to its cast members. Renea S. Brown, the Helen Hayes-winning lead from “The Mountaintop,” shines as the corporate cousin who ostensibly tries to keep things together while hiding deeper insecurities about her place in the world. Hillary Jones is fierce as the imprisoned cousin who softens as they drift back into happier childhood memories, or as she sits and consumes old episodes of “Good Times” and bowls of Cookie Crisp (which I’m thinking must get softer as the play goes on as well).

Shatoya Jn.Baptiste’s set rings true as modest modern apartment with a working fold-out couch. Alberto Segarra’s lighting captures the morning light and half-darkness of harsh sodium vapor streetlamps outside. It works well with the fabulous projections of Luis Garcia, which make an impact to start the work, but don’t return much later. 

Sound designer Matthew M. Nielsen’s challenge was to find a compromise between a small apartment where a TV is on much of the time (but has volume turned up at key parts) and trying to distinguish ambient offstage noise  — some scripted and others apparently from banging daytime construction during a recent matinee in the building where Theater Alliance is working.  

Compared to that, the candy wrapper crinkling was nothing. 

Running time: About 90 minutes, no intermission.

Photo credit: Renea S. Brown and Hillary Jones in “Furlough’s Paradise.” Photo by Chris Banks. 

“Furlough’s Paradise” runs through Nov. 23 at Theater Alliance, 340 Maple St SW. Information online.