Joan Marcus
Watch out for those loud, annoying cicadas – they seem to have a story to tell.
At least that's what they do in Branden Jacobs-Jenkin's excellent, beautifully performed production of “Appropriate,” which opens tonight at the Helen Hayes Theater with one of the best casts – led by an astonishing Sarah Paulson – on Broadway.
“Appropriate” is a compelling family drama directed by Lila Neugebauer (that easily rivals her exemplary work in 2018’s “The Waverly Gallery”). Appropriate is a nasty cacophony of unnerving mysteries, old resentments and laugh-out-loud comedy – the latter all the more remarkable. Within a story about the darkest horrors of America's heritage.
Legacies that, as Appropriate so powerfully demonstrates, cannot remain buried for long despite our best efforts. Just as the cicadas we remember stay underground for 13 years before invading our soil, hate, along with secrets and resentments, has a way of making itself felt.
Set in the summer of 2011—before Black Lives Matter, before white America had even begun to appropriate the vocabulary of cultural appropriation—Appropriate brings together a largely estranged trio of siblings as they re-engage with their late father's estate—a former plantation home in Arkansas , no less, a huge, decaying house that was occupied by various and extended members of the Lafayette family for many, many generations.
Paulson, Elle Fanning, Joan Marcus
Estate sales and off-stage deaths of family heads are always ripe for drama, especially in the feuding survivor genre, but Appropriate takes the scenario to a new level. But first we get to know the family: There is the eldest sister Toni (Paulson), whose anger and cruel outbursts are only surpassed by her blind loyalty to her late father.
Michael Esper, Stoll, Paulson, Joan Marcus
Next up is Bo (Corey Stoll), who has been in the family for a long time but is now in a difficult financial situation. He is more balanced than Sister Toni, at least until he isn't anymore.
Then there's Frank or Franz or whatever the very troubled outsider of the Lafayette family calls himself these days. Franz, skillfully played by Michael Esper, has been missing for about a decade and is seemingly finally struggling with sobriety after a past crime that only gradually becomes known to the audience.
Along for the very bumpy ride are Rhys (Graham Campbell), Toni's moody, mostly silent and very troubled – that word is essential when it comes to the Lafayettes – teenage son; Rachael (Natalie Gold), Bo's Jewish wife, who knows all too well the bigotry that rumbles within the walls of the crumbling house; River (Elle Fanning), Franz's much younger fiancée, whose New Age hippie bromides seem strangely pointed; and Cassidy (Alyssa Emily Marvin), Bo and Rachel's precocious 13-year-old daughter, who will play a crucial role in reviving some of these decaying family secrets.
Finally, there is little Ainsley (played by Lincoln Cohen in the reviewed performance), who mostly runs uncontrollably through the old house – and who provides one of the most astonishing final moments in the first act in recent memory.
Taking place on a huge, two-tiered set beautifully designed by the Dots collective, Appropriate presents itself early on as a fairly standard family battle over money before it takes a downright horrific turn. A photo album is discovered among the father's old rubble that is not filled with the usual smiley polaroids: the album contains photos of lynched black people. And that's not even the scariest discovery that can be found hidden in the nooks and crannies of the old plantation.
Esper, Graham Campbell, Joan Marcus
Did the dark artifacts belong to Dad? Where did they leave other ancestors behind? If so, why did dad keep them? These questions fuel the ensuing family feud, as each character struggles to come to terms – or not – with a legacy that is inextricably linked to America's ugliest history. And just wait until one of the characters realizes that the artifacts might be worth a lot of money to the right collector.
To reveal more of the plot – and there is much more – would spoil much of the power of the piece, so it's best to focus here on the characters and the performances of the cast. As Toni, Paulson, best known to television audiences for her roles in the American Horror Story franchise but a long-time favorite with New York theatergoers, is relentless in her viciousness. Toni fancies herself a truthteller, and for the most part she is, but she is also unaware of the truths that come too close, from her late father's secrets to the hatred that lurks beneath the surface of her teenage son's silence.
The rest of the cast more than holds up to Paulson's tornado performance. As Bo, Stoll (House of Cards) takes perhaps the least interesting character – the financially strapped, supposedly enlightened peacemaker turned grabber – and finds the nuances that Jacobs-Jenkins plants like so many small weeds.
Natalie Gold, Stoll Joan Marcus
Esper, who at points references his memorable performance as a creepy stalker in the David Bowie musical Lazarus, keeps us guessing throughout. Is Franz's true nature true: recovered and restored? Or the hideous predator that Toni swears he is?
Just as well as spouses (or soon-to-be spouses), Gold (Rava Roy in Succession) and Fanning (Catherine the Great in Hulu's “The Great”) walk the line between observing and participating in family strife, which is Jacobs-Jenkins' point of view illustrates that the sins of history cloud even those who think they are watching from a safe distance.
Campbell, in a terrific Broadway debut as the dark, explosive Rhys and Marvin (who, as the ghost of a Holocaust victim, almost stole last season's Gray House), captures the in-between world of the younger Lafayettes, teenagers who bear the sins of their fathers and grandfathers in itself. “Appropriate” doesn’t spare their youth, but maybe, just maybe, offers the young cousins a moment of grace and opportunity.
But no absolution. The future, Appropriate suggests, is burdened with a past as solid as any damn tree, a point made in a breathtaking coup de théâtre that unfolds after every Lafayette leaves the stage. With an explosion of noise (those cicadas again, among other acoustic interventions, courtesy of sound designers Bray Poor and Will Pickens), Jane Cox's spooky lighting effects, and the transformation of the Dots' plantation set from dilapidated to dilapidated, Appropriate offers an ending that is remarkable in its emotional power and breathtaking in its stagecraft. Neugebauer, Jacobs-Jenkins and their very good cast resurrect the ghosts of history and let them be abandoned, loud, relentless and going nowhere in the foreseeable future.
Title: Suitable
Venue: Helen Hayes Theater on Broadway
Written by: Branden Jacobs Jenkins
Leaded by: Lila Neugebauer
Pour: Sarah Paulson, Corey Stoll, Michael Esper, Natalie Gold, Elle Fanning, Graham Campbell, Alyssa
Emily Marvin, Lincoln Cohen/Everett Sobers
Duration: 2 hours 45 minutes (including break)