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Ogden • "Appropriate" as in fitting or suitable, or "appropriate" as in steal for your use? Which meaning does playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins intend for the title of his play, making its regional premiere at Good Company Theatre?
If it's the first meaning, the title is ironic because the family in "Appropriate" do not act — well — appropriately. They are the quintessential dysfunctional family, united only by the fact that they shared a father. Now that father, Ray, has died, and they've returned to a rundown plantation in Arkansas to sort through his belongings and try to salvage anything valuable before they sell the property to pay his debts. There they find an album of photographs that suggest their father may have been a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
But this family don't need an incendiary discovery like the photos to throw them into turmoil. Past disagreements and hurtful confrontations have left scars, and it doesn't take much to open them again. Elder sister Toni (Teresa Sanderson) feels she always had to take responsibility for their father and cope with family problems, and that's undermined her life and marriage. "How long have I been the villain here, the family crazy?" she asks.
Brother Bo (Paul Naylor) claims he had to bear the financial burden of caring for their father and younger brother and hopes to recover some of that expense from the sale. Shockingly, he suggests that perhaps the photos are worth something. His wife, Rachel (Sahna Foley), steadfastly defends him and reveals she had her own issues with Ray.
Frank (David A. Boice), the black-sheep brother who has been absent for 10 years, now calls himself Franz and says he has returned "to make peace." "I came here to heal all of us," he announces magnanimously, encouraged by his much-younger, New Agey girlfriend, River (Nicole Finney), who helpfully chimes in, "You're all hurt." His siblings are understandably skeptical.
Bo's teenage daughter, Cassidy (Liggera Edmonds-Allen), and Toni's teenage son, Rhys (Seth Foster), struggle to figure out where they fit into this "misfit, disaster" family.
As to the title's second meaning, Jacobs-Jenkins acknowledges his debt to plays like Sam Shepard's "Buried Child" and Tracy Letts' "August: Osage County," but the racial tension underlying "Appropriate," and what the individual reactions to the photos reveal about family members, is uniquely his own.
Sanderson proves again that no one is better at playing a bitchy woman with an ax to grind, but making "Appropriate" work is an ensemble effort, and all the cast members find moments to shine. Alicia Washington's direction unerringly charts the rise and fall of the family's volatile emotions.
Good Company's intimate performing space serves this production well; we feel we are silent witnesses to the squabbles in the cluttered living room set designed by Washington and Derek Williamson. William Peterson's straightforward lighting and Washington's casual costumes enhance that realistic atmosphere. The incessant chirping of the cicadas in Washington's sound design creates a feeling of foreboding.
At one point, Toni says, "Maybe that's what family is — a bunch of stories we tell." As the individual stories of this family coalesce and collide, Jacobs-Jenkins captures the complex weave that makes up the fabric of any family's history. When the family comes from the South, that fabric may contain controversial threads. —
'Appropriate'
Good Company's richly realized production captures the conflict that binds and separates a Southern family.
When • Reviewed on April 29; plays Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., with 4 p.m. matinees on Sundays, through May 15
Where • Good Company Theatre, upstairs at 260 Historic 25th St. in Ogden
Tickets • $17; goodcotheatre.com; contains adult language and situations
Running time • Two hours (including an intermission)