Dramatists, wherever they ply their trade, know that there is very fertile soil to be found when one digs around family reunions.
In Afro American playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins play APPROPRIATE, Ray Lafayette has recently passed on, leaving a huge family country estate. Ray’s oldest sibling Toni has put the estate on the market, and her two siblings with families/partners in tow, return before the auction.
Ray has left his mansion in disarray, possessions are strewn everywhere. To tidy things up for the auction, everyone is busily going through stuff when one amongst them stumbles on a large photo album. The album depicts photos of the lynching of black slaves as well as pictures of black corpses. In his very backyard Ray made a large graveyard where his Afro American slaves were buried.
At one time there was talk of Ray Lafayette becoming a high ranking Judge. He was thought of as a good man but, underneath, was there a deeply racist, bigoted man?!
Wesley Enoch’s production vigorously drives home the theme of Jacobs-Jenkins’ play, that there was a sick energy that Ray left with his death, which is still pervasive, and effects everyone.
Whilst the play is set in the Deep South of America, it could easily have been situated in the Deep North of Australia, and our appalling treatment of the indigenous population..
Mandy McElhinney’s performance as the boisterous, thorny, crude, overbearing, oldest sibling, Toni. Toni has resented that she had to look after her father in the last period of his life.
She asks her siblings why they are so money orientated, knowing how much she is ‘stirring the pot’.
In one of the play’s most telling scenes, Toni is leaning on the balustrade half way up the staircase, looking down at the two ‘messes’ that are her siblings have become, telling them, in a heartbroken way, how she has spent so much time bringing them up, and look where it has got her?!
James Fraser plays Toni’s gruff, troubled son Rhys, who can’t bear any intimacy with his mother.
In his first appearance on stage for a long time Sam Worthington plays the conservative, middle sibling Bo. He has returned home in the hope that he will receive a good inheritance that will help him support his family.
Lucy Bell gives a memorable performance as Bo’s Jewish wife Rachael. Rachael is the most forthright of all the characters, speaking her mind at every opportunity. She talks to Toni about what she saw as Ray’s virulent antisemitism.
Bo and Rachel have two precocious kids, Cassidy and Ainsley, well played by Ella Jacob and Robbi Morgan.
Johnny Carr plays the youngest sibling Franz. Franz has had a troubled past, and is trying to turn his life around, with the support of his young fiancee, River, a hippie girl who Toni dismissively calls, ‘the sweet girl’. Brenna Harding gives a fine performance in the role.
Elizabeth Gadsby impressed with her finely detailed period set of the living room and surrounds of an Arkansas country estate.
This was an unnerving, confronting, important night in the theatre. APPROPRIATE is playing the Roslyn Packer Theatre, 22 Hickson Road, Walsh Bay until Saturday 10th April, 2021.
Performance times are Mondays and Tuesdays at 6.30pm, Wednesdays to Saturdays at 7.30pm. Matinee performances are Wednesdays at 1pm and Saturdays at 1.30pm.
Running time 2hrs and 20 minutes including one interval
http://www.sydneytheatre.com.au
Featured image ; Johnny Carr and Brenna Harding in the STC’s ‘Appropriate’. Pic Prudence Upton (c)
APPROPRIATE is playing the Roslyn Packer Theatre, 22 Hickson Road, Walsh Bay until Saturday 10th April, 2021.
Performance times are Mondays and Tuesdays at 6.30pm, Wednesdays to Saturdays at 7.30pm. Matinee performances are Wednesdays at 1pm and Saturdays at 1.30pm.
Running time 2hrs and 20 minutes including one interval
http://www.sydneytheatre.com.au
Featured image ; Johnny Carr and Brenna Harding in the STC’s ‘Appropriate’. Pic Prudence Upton (c)