The plot is a familiar one. The head of a family dies and his family comes to the house to resolve all the issues re inheritance. Besides the fact that the play is spot on, the set and physical production for a limited run in a small theater was astounding. The set includes what looks like a mess of books & junk by the lip of the stage. Between acts, the stagehands have to clear all the mess. How they do it was ingenious.
This could easily move to Broadway as it is that good. It is playing at the Pershing Square Signature Center .
Physical production is very impressive as you mention but I don't see any way this would ever move to Broadway. I respectfully disagree with you on the show itself. The script is a mishmash of dozens of better plays and I do hope the acting has improved since the first preview.
Saw this on 3/9 & found it to be one of the BEST things I have seen at Signature in a while. Deep, rich, substantial play getting a solid production rich in so many ways. Yeah, it covers storyline we have maybe seen before, but rather than view that as a negative, I prefer to see it as covering something incredibly universal. We all have parents that pass away & leave stuff for the surviving family members to deal with & it is rarely passive or boring. Developed at Sundance Institute & the recipient of the Tennessee Williams award, I recommend this for anyone seeking a good play representing a new young playwright.
I saw this and thought it was mostly good, but I couldn't agree more that it rips off other plays that have pulled this type of story off a thousand times better. It is still entertaining and well-performed, but it can't hold a candle to the plays it is obviously...let's just say inspired by. And it throws in one-too-many "shocking" plot revelations for my taste.
My main problem with the writing, however, was that it just all seemed a bit too mean-spirited. At least consistently mean-spirited. A play like AUGUST masterfully manages to control its flux into and then out of the realm of mean-spiritedness, without ever becoming exhausting or having that nastiness be a turn off. Here, it definitely wears its welcome. And it can leave a bit of a bad taste in your mouth. The characters are just all so miserable and mean. Sometimes that can be fun, but for me APPROPRIATE pushed the envelope a bit too far in terms of the tone of the characters and the piece. It got a bit tiring and one-note.
The adult performers could absolutely not have been stronger...I think a lot of the reason I enjoyed myself so much was thanks to these great performers. Sadly I didn't think the kids were too great, though. The set was wonderful and I thought the direction was fantastic. I especially liked the final sequence, which was haunting and really well-done.
You could do a lot worse than APPROPRIATE (in fact, you could do a lot worse in the same building...this is leagues better than KUNG FU and I enjoyed it more than THE OPEN HOUSE) but it just made me wish the piece took a more original approach to the whole "dysfunctional family" theme. It has a certain "been there, done that...more than once...and in better shows" feel about it.
Current Avatar: Cynthia Erivo, bringing down the house in The Color Purple.
Having read this play, I think it's brilliant. It's a shame it never made it to Broadway. I also think it's really impressive that Branden Jacobs-Jenkins also wrote the play before he was even 30 years old. He's one of the most creative, original voices in the theatre right now and I look forward to every new play he writes.
joined:5/17/03
joined:
5/17/03
Posted: 3/11/14 at 6:05pm