Past Reviews

Regional Reviews: Connecticut and the Berkshires

Appropriate
Westport Country Playhouse
Review by Fred Sokol | Season Schedule

Also see Zander's review of Saturday Night Fever: The Musical and Fred's reviews of Actually and This


Anna Crivelli and Allison Winn
Photo by Carol Rosegg
Appropriate. continuing at Westport Country Playhouse through September 2nd, is a bombastic play, an intra-family drama that is tension-filled. At times, this is all too obvious. The scripting is by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, a young man who received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2016.

Set designer Andrew Boyce provides the ramshackle interior of a house that used to be a part of an Arkansas plantation. Before a word is uttered, amplifying sounds of cicadas dominate in a sensory overload (sound design by Fitz Patton). Then, Franz (Shawn Fagan) manages to climb into the place through a side window. He hasn't been a part of the family for many years and is something of a mystery. He assists his girlfriend River (Anna Crivelli) as she joins him. We soon learn that she is new age to an extreme, dreamy and very much functioning in a singular orbit. As her character is developed, it becomes fun to appreciate her dizzying nature.

Toni (Betsy Aidem) is executor for this property and she has recently experienced a career and marriage that have both fallen apart. She speaks harshly, in grating tones throughout. Her son on Rhys (Nick Selting) does not particularly adore his mother. Toni does, though, have some kind thoughts for her recently deceased father. Bo (David Aaron Baker) is a brother who has done well, fiscally, in New York City. He, too, amps up his volume much of the time. Arriving on the scene with Bo is his Jewish wife Rachael (Diane Davis). One of their children is a boy named Ainsley (Christian Michael Camporin), who has a pivotal appearance late in the action. Their teenage daughter Cassie (Allison Winn) is precocious. She and Rhys have eyes for one another.

This is very much a dysfunctional contingent when it comes to lending some order to the house and dealing with considerable dollars owed to the bank. It seems that Dad hoped to transformed his house into a bed and breakfast operation. An album of photographs is discovered and this results in some dramatic revelations concerning the lynching of black men. The old man also might have been anti-Semitic.

The characters, to an extent, are too recognizable. Three siblings are on the scene together. Bo evidently knows something about money, while angry Toni doesn't really see that her father was racist. She actually cared for him as he neared death. Franz is an outsider who appears out of nowhere; he has a hidden past, too.

The cast, directed by David Kennedy, is proficient, but there's some over-articulation during the early going. Harangue, for this extended family, carries on and on for much of the performance. While it's tough to locate huge sympathy of the individuals, one scene, just after intermission, is a clear and lovely winner.

That two-person segment features Cassie and Rachael sitting together and conversing. As a woman of 23, Rachael has notions and thoughts to share with a girl who might be 8 or 10 years younger. This is a quiet and luminous sequence. The actresses, Allison Winn as Cassie, and Anna Crivelli as River, are sweetly affecting.

Inclusive of a ghostly presence, a shattering storm, literal fighting, considering yelling, and the unwelcome returning volume of the cicada sound, Appropriate is situated in a house to which people have returned from all over—New York, Atlanta, Portland, and, in Franz's instance, wherever.

Jacobs-Jenkins's play would benefit from nuance, which could serve to balance otherwise blatant hostility. The author spells out conflicts and various verbal battles which drive hard at an observing audience. That many of the characters have issues and problems isn't hard to discern. The special effects WCP utilizes are either effective or a bit assaulting—or both, according to a theatergoer's tastes.

Appropriate continues at Westport Country Playhouse in Westport, Connecticut, through September 2nd, 2017. For tickets, visit westportplayhouse.org or call (203) 227-4177.