For the first time, a Tennessee Williams play is not the headliner at the Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis. I was perfectly fine with this pivot even before the production of Brendan Jacobs-Jenkins’ “Appropriate” turned out to be a gem.
The Williams’ Festival’s founder and executive artistic director, Carrie Houk, is not content to run on autopilot. Instead, she is looking for ways to broaden the festival’s reach while keeping Williams at its center. Her solution this year is to focus on Williams’ legacy.
“Appropriate” is a fine choice for encouraging festivalgoers to consider Williams’ influence on later playwrights. Like “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” “Appropriate” is about a Southern family at loggerheads over the prospect of an inheritance. Both plays portray the families and their conflicts with extraordinary richness. (In 2017, Jacobs-Jenkins told the London Evening Standard, “‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ is the play I’ve probably read the most times in my life.”)
The Lafayette family has assembled at their father’s house in Arkansas for an estate sale to clear out the former plantation home before selling it. It is unclear how much will be left after a bank loan is settled, but the money aggravates the friction between the oldest child Toni, who cared for her father at the end, and the elder son Bo, who paid the bills.
The unexpected guest at this gathering is the younger son Franz (formerly Frank) and his much younger fiancée River. He has been estranged from the family for years, and he wants to make amends for his checkered past.
The family legacy grows more complicated when never-before-seen pictures and specimens turn up in house. They suggest the family may have an appalling legacy of racism. Dealing with that disturbing possibility adds fuel to the incendiary feelings that already exist.
The internecine hostility produces riveting theater thanks to the brilliance of both the writing and the festival’s production. The playwright and the cast are equally at home in emotional fireworks and in quiet scenes that dig deeply into the characters’ makeup.
The superb festival cast includes:
- Jilanne Marie Klaus as Toni Lafayette
- Michael James Reed as Bo Lafayette
- Joel Moses as Franz (Frank) Lafayette
- Lizi Watt as Rachael Lafayette, Bo’s wife
- Ainsley Hammond as Cassidy Lafayette, Bo and Rachael’s oldest child
- Aviv Giancola-Poremba as Ainsley Kramer-Lafayette, Bo and Rachael’s youngest child
- Braden Phillips as Rhys Thurston, Toni’s son.
- Maggie Newstead-Adams as River
Matthew McCarthy’s scenic design is the spacious interior of a plantation house that fills the large stage of the Catherine B. Berges Theatre. Director Benny Sato-Ambush’s use of this space is masterly.
The set cleverly suggests the house’s age and walls with weathered windows and doors seen from the outside. (See photo.) Properties designer and supervisor Mikhail Lynn fills the house with clutter left by the deceased owner, who was a hoarder.
Abby Pastorello’s costumes are well attuned to the characters. A rousing melee breaks out in Act Two under fight director Shaun Sheley. The droning of cicadas is a major feature of Mary Robinson’s sound design. Robinson and lighting designer Matthew McCarthy nicely accentuate suggestions of the supernatural.
“Appropriate” continues through September 27, 2027, at COCA (Center of Creative Arts), 6880 Washington Avenue.
—Gerry Kowarsky
Photo © Phillip Hamer Photography
From the left, Lizi Watt as Rachael, Joel Moses as Franz, Jilanne Marie Klaus as Toni, and Michael James Reed as Bo in “Appropriate.”
