“I’m not uncomfortable. Should I be?”
This line from the latest offering from Bluebarn Theatre sums up this play, which pushes the boundaries of what is right and wrong.
Appropriate is the third productions in the Bluebarn’s 36th season, which is themed “Season of Purpose.”
Opening with an overwhelming cacophony of cicada, cricket, and frog noises, the Tony-Award winning play, written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, follows a white family after the death of their father. Their return to his ancestral plantation home in rural Arkansas to deal with his estate ignites fires of rage, guilt, and grief. Set in the house of a man who had become a hoarder, the siblings and their families grapple with each other, and are confronted with the fact that their father was not the person they knew.
The story wraps itself around a relic that reveals the worst of their father's legacy—one that is culturally current on many levels; Toni (played by Leanne Hill Carlson) comes to her father’s defense by stating that the relic was not his, while brothers Bo (Scott Working) and Franz (Michael Cavanaugh), along with Bo’s wife Rachael (Daena Schweiger), are not so sure of that. Each character has a different way of reacting to the relic. Cassie (Olivia Patinkin), 13-year-old daughter to Bo and Rachael, asks the central message of the play when she is looking at the relic and wondering if she should be uncomfortable with what she sees.
Broken into acts titled Book of Revelations, Walpurgisnacht, and The Book of Genesis, this play captures how years of rot within a family can lead to its destruction and its recreation. Walpurgisnacht, celebrated on April 30, is the name given to the evening before Saint Walpurga’s canonization, and it was widely believed that her intercession warded off witchcraft and evil spirits. The Books of Revelations and Genesis, the end and beginning of the Bible respectively, put an expected narrative in place for audiences. The narratives of these acts align with the books of the Bible they are named after, but accomplish them in an incredibly subversive way.
The personal traumas of each sibling are revealed masterfully through the writing and acting, immersing audiences in the confusion and hurt each of these characters experience as they relive the past and come to terms with the present.
