The Broadway Theatre Review: Second Stage Theatre’s Appropriate

By Ross

All the definitions of the word, “appropriate” hang above the stage as we walk in, giving alternative hints as to the title’s value and worth. It teases out some formulations, without giving anything away, which I will try not to do as well. But what I will say is that this captivatingly revealing production of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ brilliant play, Appropriate is about as sensational as Broadway can get. It’s ravishingly well performed by each and every one who enters, regardless of whichever door or window they climb through. It’s both hilariously morbid and disturbing while being gravely fascinating and meaningful in its unwinding. The energy is as electric and tense as those opening few aural moments that seize control of our nervous system and take us to exactly where they want us to be. It could have been held a bit longer, as was done by the Coal Mine Theatre‘s production I most gratefully saw a few months back, but the overall itch and squirm that was delivered before the curtain even rose did the job well and deliberate.

Using gothic horror as its framework, Appropriate delivers a spectacularly distinct unraveling; as intense and threatening as the darkness that initially takes over the space. The dynamic and chaotic play is destined to ensnare anyone who enters, with or without a flashlight. It feels like a ghost story wrapped in the haunted memories of its vast connection to Southern history and enslavement, and it plays solidly with that framework, lodging it inside our collective heads and forcing us to squirm in the overpowering static darkness waiting for what feels like forever before we can start making out the pickled bones of the beginning. In a way the play is actually about ghosts, but not one where the undead will rise up out of the floorboards or appear at the window looking in – even though it always feels like the haunted past is there, floating around or peering in, and having its way with us by mystically keeping us perched on the edge of our seats.

But the haunting demons come from within, scattered about the space, seen and unseen, known and ignored, just waiting to be unpacked and discovered. They aren’t actually floating down the stairs or up from the basement, but they are as determined as ever to enter the room, one way or another. The images are determined to unsettle any who open up that particular chapter of Southern history and really see what is there in black and white. If you really want to take it in. It’s all there; displayed and framed; jarred and jarring, cataloged and presenting a disturbing time and formulation, even if we are determined to swim in the murky waters of denial, trying to submerge the evidence.

Written with a wise sense of purpose and complexity, most intensely, by Jacobs-Jenkins (An Octoroon; Everybody), Appropriate soars on that fully formulated theatrical Second Stage on Broadway, designed with an intense, glaring grand purpose by dots (BAM/Broadway’s The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window) with a determined and subtle lighting design by Jane Cox (Broadway’s Machinal). The space is dizzyingly well formed, digging in with an expert eye for what is at the core of this compelling piece of theatre, while shifting its brittle focus around as easily as a wandering flashlight. The play won the 2014 Obie Award for Best New American Play, and in its reformation, as directed with a side-eyed glance of authenticity by Lila Neugebauer (Broadway’s The Waverly Gallery), the piece finds its way, steadfast and true into the delicious and angry dysfunction that exists slyly in the very bones and hidden remnants of this Lafayette family clan returning. They have all come, much to the surprise and mistrust of most, to their father’s decaying Arkansas plantation that should have been “more Gone With the Wind, and less hoarder”, but it isn’t, to deal with the familial legacy and their long-held combustive alliances. It’s a clever petri dish of dramatic tension, growing forth years of unsaid grievances and resentment, but, on the more observable surface, these siblings have come to untangle their recently deceased father’s complicated inheritance and somehow find closure, whether they want it or not.

That inheritance Is not all there in property and banknotes laid out in their father’s will, but it is seared with more force in a bound relic that shines a sharp beam of light on their family’s possible problematic past and unwanted legacy. Casually found and revealed in distraction, it burns a bright hot light on their parental heritage, pushing to the surface decades of interpersonal resentment and distrust that have been ready and waiting for years to be unleashed on one another, like an unopened journal. Historical sin is what lies waiting on the shelf, biting in and drawing forth decades of unsaid venom into the family’s tight dysfunction. Bitterness and a punitive punishment have simmered, slowly burning itself steadfastly into their souls and hearts. Especially the oldest daughter, Toni, intensely and magnificently played by the utterly perfect Sarah Paulson (Broadway’s Crimes of the Heart; “Ratched“). This desperate mother of one carries so much complicated embittered rage that one can’t help but lean in as much as possible as you simultaneously desire to back away out of fear and the instinctual need to protect. Paulson’s performance is a captivatingly stellar and tense unleashing, one that will register and be carried out of the theatre like a bruise on an arm, still stinging from all that hurt and pain that was thrown hard with such vengeance at almost every person in that room right up until the moment she says “Good-bye“.

It’s a searingly difficult comedic drama to digest, crawling in through the window from one of America’s most gifted young playwrights, to deliver the dynamic goods. The three adult children, rotting away from the insides, have come together, unwillingly and with a ton of baggage and resentment. They arrive, un-unified, in a protective stance, wanting, in a way, to sort themselves out as they go through the hoarded mementos that their father had gathered around him before his death. But it’s more a collision course over debt and contention, with each carrying secrets and weapons from the other and themselves, ultimately determined to be the one who gets out less bruised than when they walked or climbed in. And if this non-typical haunted house has any say in the matter – and boy, does this house have a lot to say and unveil – this explosive reunion is a brawl just waiting to happen. Not the big familial hug that at least some of them were hoping for.

Beyond the recently divorced and rancorous Toni, and her troubled son, Rhys, fantastically embodied by Graham Campbell, making his professional debut, her two younger brothers arrive, separately, and drag out more complications and skeletons than any old house could ever give, even one with both a familial graveyard and an unmarked slave graveyard out back. The older brother to Toni is Bo, the one who, at first, seems to have his business and life in some sort of order, even though he can’t seem to get off his cell phone and find a way to be present. Even with his wife. But Toni doesn’t let that get in the way of flinging vile, foul-mouthed anger at Bo, played with detailed determination by the always impressive Corey Stoll (Classic Stage Company’s Macbeth), as his wife, the multi-layered Rachael, played strong and true by Natalie Gold (RTC’s Distracted) orders and yells at their two children; the young fireball, Ainsley, played frantically by Lincoln Cohen (Showtime’s “Matt Rogers…“) [alternate nights, the part is also played by Evertt Sobers], and the older “almost an adult” daughter, Cassidy, slyly and awkwardly (in all the best ways possible) portrayed by Alyssa Emily Marvin (Broadway’s Grey House), in a frazzled frenzy of troubled form and function.

The three younger family members (Campbell, Marvin, and Cohen) are bafflingly good in their roles, bringing both authentic form and familiarity to their characters that surprise and connect. But it’s Toni’s younger brother, Franz, fascinatingly portrayed by Michael Esper (NYTW’s Lazarus) whose unexplained arrival, with his newly formed flower-child fiancé, River, played to complete perfection by Elle Fanning (Hulu’s “The Great“), really brings the trauma and the history of this family, drenched in addiction and pedophilia, to the surface. Both compellingly excellent in their parts, they feed and draw each other forward into the forgiveness light. Yet, unearthed and dirty, Toni’s unhinged anger rises up quickly, ready to be flung with such hate and fury that it takes work to stay in the room with her and them. No one trusts anyone in that house, as the secrets and the shame keep rising up from the floorboards ready to sharply splinter and spear the skin with a bloody vengeance. Apologies find no weight in the bitter waters of Toni’s existence as the jarred evidential mementos are ignored and secreted away, destined to return like a hard punch to the face.

Secrets are thrown about, quickly and with the deepest of intentions, mostly hitting the targets, even when the target is hiding in the darkness. But oddly the longing for love and care, and the undercurrent need for familial attachment sneaks in, even when misdirected. Somewhere, underneath all that anger, bitterness, jealousy, and betrayal, some form of needed connection hangs in the balance, finding relief in an absence or from asked-for hugs. They all just seem scared by all that history and the mistrust that comes with it; terrified and haunted by the idea that it will consume them all. No one really wants to know about the truth, or the possibilities of mental health issues in their father. They’d rather attack and dismantle.

Costumed with skill by Dede Ayite (Broadway’s Topdog/Underdog), with a solid static-intense sound design by Bray Poor and Will Pickens (BAM/Broadway’s The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window), Appropriate never lets up, haunting the walls and the rooms with hate and racial disturbances, gobbling up the lives of sweet girls and sugar, as we watch it all crumble to the ground. There are numerous moments of complicated and uncomfortable humor floating down the stairs at the most uncomfortable moment possible, either over the head of a young kid at play, or giving an Uncle the wrong vantage point and an incorrect assumption to unpack. All of which are handled well, and with humourous complex intent.

Trapped in the intense disturbing sound of screaming cicadas and all those shitty historical memories that have been buried deep for more than just seven years, these misfit disaster people swing hard (and a bit clumsily orchestrated by Unkledave’s Fight-House), trying to bring the same amount of damage to the other as they feel inside. Paulson’s Toni delivers the painfully angry goods with a rage that is wildly intoxicating and magnificently mesmerizing. Her inner destructive power, unleashed from her pain and longing, is frighteningly clear, and never more apparent and Appropriate than inside that final disappearing act delivered on the stairs. It’s a performance that will live on for a long long time (right to the Tony Awards), stinging and hurting like the wounds that were inflicted upon her so many years ago from abandonment and love’s disappointment. Paulson is breathtakingly brilliant in the complex role, as powerful as the whole decrepit destruction that soon follows. Something I’m still thinking about to this very day.

At the edge of all these mismatched crazy memories, laced with blindness, anger, and denial, are the moments that make Appropriate so fascinatingly magnificent. I’m still trying to unpack the chaotic, complex, and disturbing ending that destructively decays the formula before our very eyes and the wordless wonder from those observing eyes as he takes it all in. Appropriate is that moment. And what a moment it is, engaging every fiber of our being, and fueling an overwhelming excitement and fascination in what is unpacked. Willful blindness is a crazy unhinged power, and also a defense, used to not see the ugly truth that is displayed before us. It’s not an Appropriate response, but in this play, it couldn’t be more stealth-like, especially for the times we are all trying to survive within.