Lauren F. Walker and Tiffany McLarty Photo by Joan Marcus

payne did her undergraduate work at Yale and received her M.F.A. through the David Geffen School of Drama. Her prize-winning play dives directly into the power and potential of human relationships. Mina (Tiffany McLarty) and Sade (Lauren F. Walker) are cousins who first appear upstage wearing cumbersome, heavy outer garments (credit to costumer Rea J. Brown) which they will shed.

Sade's mother (Mina's aunt) has just passed on and Mina was responsible for the cremation even if Sade was unaware. Sade has been incarcerated but has a three-day furlough so that she can be present at the funeral. Mina has a prestigious college degree while Sade, at the age of 18, had a baby. The two women, within Mina's residence, audaciously and openly share hopes. Sade dreams of some kind of utopia, a concept she has discussed with women in prison. Mina comes across as more of a realist but Sade is the one who, no matter what, will return to prison. Mina has a more varied life which includes a girlfriend. The cousins have each lost a parent and seem to lack a relationship with remaining parents. Sade and Mina, right now, have one another, but they are not always in agreement and they are unafraid of conflict.

Director abigail jean-baptiste and, when suitable, fight and intimacy director Kelsey Rainwater coax physicality. That choice further fuels crackling performances as actors speak both to each other as well as to the rapt audience before them. Two life forces on stage maintain rigor throughout.

The snappy, revealing dialogue opens a window that grants witness to predicaments and encourages those watching to nearly feel the emotional, intimate exchanges. An early version of the play was included in the 2023 Carlotta Festival, a New Haven program of the Geffen School of Drama. The current rendering is not a world premiere but its dynamic drive is especially fresh.

Both actors are exhilarating, an unusual word, perhaps, to describe people who are challenged in a play about grief, to a certain extent. Walker, as belligerent Sade, is angry to be confined. McLarty's Mina is attempting to navigate, to make sense of her life. She clings to the concept of promise rather than despair. While these individuals are enmeshed in both individual and collective struggle, there is vivacity and almost an aura of spirit underlying their performances.

payne, in a recent question and answer with the gifted playwright Amy Herzog, said, "I think about these characters as being at the end of the world, or the end of their world, in the sense of their lineage and family. There's nobody left above them at all..." This jarring play blasts forward, seems epic in implication, and, at the end, one is totally surprised at all that has transpired within 95 or 100 minutes.

The production is sensationally imaginative. Lighting designer Alan C. Edwards shifts hues and sometimes goes full throttle with glaring seizures of light. Constant Dzah supplies original music which plays at high volume. Production designer Wiktor Freifeld's images transform sometimes hyperrealistic theatre into sequences of much quieter reverie.

If there is a utopia out there to seek and inhabit, it must be one without the fear of punishment. Furlough's Paradise is about freedom and independence. a.k. payne has written a potent and poetic play recommending a better day. Choreographer Ogemdi Ude and director jean-baptiste help the actors fully complement the author's sharp dialogue. Walker and McLarty create a unique dance as they proceed.

Furlough's Paradise runs through May 16, 2026, at Yale Repertory Theatre, 1120 Chapel St., New Haven CT. For tickets and information, please call 203-432-1234 or visit yalerep.org.