Review: APPROPRIATE at The Seattle Rep

Dear Readers, why do we like shows about dysfunctional families?  I posit that it’s one of two reasons.  Either we are reveling in knowing that your family isn’t that bad or watching as more of a catharsis of seeing a family like yours get through their dysfunction.  Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins seems to enjoy them too as he keeps making them and making them well.  Last year’s Tony Award winner for Best Play was his, “Purpose”, and the year before he won the Tony for Best Revival of a Play with “Appropriate”.  But whatever your reason for seeing these kinds of shows, you’ll want to catch the Seattle Rep’s current production of “Appropriate” as they’ve knocked it out of the park.

As I said, it’s one of those dysfunctional family shows.  Siblings Toni and Bo (Jen Taylor and Tim Gouran) have come to their late father’s house to see about selling off the estate.  They’ve brought with them their respective families, Toni’s teen son Rhys (Jonas Winburn), and Bo’s wife Rachael and their kids Cassie and Ainsley (Angela Di Marco, Ellie Getman, and Nolan Keany on the night I saw it).  Enter Toni and Bo’s estranged younger brother Frank (Billy Finn) and his girlfriend River (Sophie Kelly-Hedrick) and this weekend of packing up the house results in all the icky family secrets coming into the harsh light of day.

The trope is certainly one we’ve seen before but Jacobs-Jenkins has such a gift for dialog as well as a story with layers upon layers all peeled back at just the right moment, that this almost 3 hour show never becomes stale or plodding.  That could also be due to some wonderful direction from Timothy McCuen Piggee who stages and paces it beautifully knowing when to have those quieter moments and when to press down on the gas and let it all fly.  I also must call out some insanely gorgeous lighting from Robert J. Aguilar and an absolutely gorgeous and jaw dropping set from Carey Wong.  I managed to see this one on Broadway and when the curtain rose at the top of the show, I questioned whether I had travelled back in time to that Broadway moment.

But a show like this is nothing without a fantastic cast, and the cast here is not fantastic, they are stellar and a gift from the theatrical gods.  This is some top notch, cream of the crop, best that Seattle has to offer.  Winburn and Getman as the two teen cousins of the families are awesome and are anything but throw away characters as they have some quite intense moments to contend with.  And young Keany may not have had much to say but when he shows up, you know it!  Especially in one particular Act ender.  (Yeesh!).

But it’s these broken adults that bring it all home.  DiMarco and Gouran make for a wonderfully damaged married couple, each trying desperately to hold it all together and not always succeeding.  Kelly-Hedrick once again steals a Rep show as the crunchy granola girlfriend thrown into the midst of this chaos.  She blew me away in the Rep’s “Blithe Spirit” with just a few words and she blew me away here.  Finn as her wandering boyfriend and the ne’er-do-well brother brings in a stunner of a performance with so many complexities that I’m still pondering on his character.  And Taylor offers up one of her usual knockout performances as we watch her no nonsense character devolve before our eyes.  And once all the emotional dams break this entire ensemble skillfully sets off all the fireworks until nothing and no one is left whole.  And all of them manage to go from gut busting comedy to gut wrenching tragedy on a dime.

My friends, this is one of those tight, solid, well brought together productions that you simply do not want to miss.  And so, with my three-letter rating system, I give the Seattle Rep’s production of “Appropriate” a superbly dysfunctional YAY+.  So, whether you’re working through your own mess or just like to revel in the schadenfreude of others, get over to the Rep and buckle up.