By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ****

WHEN?: Saturday 27 April 2024, runs through 18 May 2024 RUNTIME: 120 minutes (no interval)

A revival of playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ 2014 play Appropriate starring Sarah Paulson is tipped to earn multiple Tony nominations tomorrow (Tuesday 30 April 2024).

• Read on for reasons including how Jacobs-Jenkins is fast becoming 1 of the world’s most interesting young playwrights

It won our 2019 Best New Play monsta for its Donmar production starring Monica Dolan and would be the 1st Tony recognition for a writer whose play Gloria starring Colin Morgan we also saw at Hampstead Theatre in 2017.

The Comeuppance was performed off Broadway last year and is set on the porch of a US home in August 2022 where friends gather after 20 years apart ahead of their high school reunion.

It might be a familiar set up but the characters portrayed and the subject matter explored are far from predictable as Tamara Lawrance’s (King Lear, Chichester Festival Theatre) unwell Ursula welcomes new father and Berlin resident Emilio warmly played by Anthony Welsh (Barber Shop Chronicles, National Theatre) to her home’s porch.

We never actually see inside as Yolanda Kettle’s (Oil, Almeida) Caitlin gets high and we learn she had a difficult relationship with Ferdinand Kingsley’s former soldier Paco who is suffering PTSD and is now with Katie Leung’s (The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide …, Hampstead Theatre) alcoholic medic.

The most eye-catching and thought-provoking element of the play is how each of the characters breaks the 4th wall to speak to the audience as death and how it stalks us all.

There is also a meditation on Covid, both pre and post, and how for some the period of isolation allowed a reflection that was welcome and has been cruelly usurped by the return to normal life that we are now all enjoying.

Directed by Eric Ting, this is a gimmick-free production which inevitably asks more familiar questions like can we ever actually break free from the people we used to be and how have our experiences inevitably contributed to the people we have become?

Jacobs-Jenkins is 1 of our favourite current writers because there is an authentic fresh take on the world there which feels considered yet revelatory.

The difficult issue of race has been explored in much of his previous work but not so here where there is a universality to the writing rendering its casting as open to interpretation.

We’ve everything crossed for the far more explosive Appropriate to succeed next week but in the meantime grab any chance you can to see Jacob-Jenkins’ work because he is fast becoming 1 of the world’s most interesting young playwrights.

• Main picture via Facebook courtesy Almeida Theatre Tickets
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