Appropriate
The words at the top of the poster for Appropriate caught my eye as I headed to Will Call: “Ferociously Theatrical.” Theatrical? Don’t most plays take place in a theater, ferociously or otherwise? But by the end of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins great big play — don’t be frightened of its two-and-a-half hour runtime, which is carried swiftly by on a rippling torrent of words propelled by great swells of emotion wrought by able actors, and its sheer size and scope allow it to do two things well for every one thing it might have done better — I had a sense of what was meant by that description. It was something like what a friend meant when, after he saw the Coen brothers’ film Miller’s Crossing, he said, “That was a gangster movie about gangster movies.” Here, we have a dysfunctional Southern family drama about dysfunctional Southern family dramas, the sort of thing that leaves you nodding in admiration more than it has you reeling in horror, gasping in awe, or weeping in sympathy.
There is a self-conscious, arm’s length quality from the outset — even in the set, which gives us the interior of a faded Arkansas plantation in which the walls are painted to depict the exterior of a faded Arkansas plantation. It’s there near the end, when folks make big speeches that sound less like family interaction and more like post-show Q&A reflections. (What is family? What is it about this family that twists those who come in contact with it?) But mostly, it’s there in the interactions throughout, which do not just offer occasional punchlines to ease the tension (“What are you, the forgiveness police?”), but also go for dramedy when tragedy might suffice. When, late in the proceedings, a brawl broke out on stage, the audience broke out in laughter — rightly so, I thought. Intentionally so. It set up the ice-cube-down-the-back moment that followed.
The year is 2011 — far enough in the past for our characters to have close connections with men who lived still further back, in a particular, ugly period of American history. The occasion is the disposal of one such man’s estate: Big Daddy LaFayette is dead, and everything must go. There’s an estate sale tomorrow, followed by an auction, and then finally, there’s the matter of the house, with its problematic graveyards — one for the family, one for the slaves who used to reside on the premises. Problematic from an environmental point of view for any prospective buyer; and from a personal point of view for any former resident. The family gathers for the occasion: dutiful daughter Toni, who took care of the old man through his declining decades; successful son Bo, who never liked the place and lives in New York with his Jewish wife; and even uninvited black sheep Franz, who has come a long way in the last ten years.
There are also members of the next generation, who give the play’s title its meaning. As 13-year-old Cassie puts it, “Do you think there’s a danger in knowing too much?” Might not it be better — if, contra Faulkner, such a thing were even possible — to let the past die with those who lived in it? Is rooting around in a dead man’s leavings beneficial? Is it…appropriate?
When
Ongoing until Sunday, February 23, 2025
Hours
| Sundays, 2pm & 7pm |
| Tuesdays, 7pm |
| Wednesdays, 7pm |
| Thursdays, 7pm |
| Fridays, 8pm |
| Saturdays, 2pm & 8pm |