Doesn’t everyone love reunions, especially class reunions — the chance to see friends not seen in several years, the chance to reminisce about the good old days, the chance to learn how well everybody’s doing now or not doing as well as they’d like, the chance to find out who’s married to whom or who’s now divorced from whom, and how many kids they’ve got either way?
What has become the touchstone for a reunion work is The Big Chill (1983), in which Glenn Close, Kevin Kline, William Hurt, Jeff Goldblum, Mary Kay Place, and a few others play characters reunited to mourn the death of a friend but find themselves spending their together-time mourning their own evasive dreams.
Yes, for good or ill that’s the template. And Branden Jacobs-Jenkins sticks to it with The Comeuppance — the title already implying at least one problem someone has. His results are extremely mixed.
[Read Sandy MacDonald’s ★★★★★ review here.]
Keep in mind not everyone regards reunions of any sort as a great opportunity. Many choose not to show up; some only attend out of perverse urges. As The Comeuppance commences, Ursula (Brittany Bradford) is one of the prospective no-shows. For her 20th high school reunion, which she’s intent on avoiding, she’s only invited five friends to her home for a pre-reunion. It’s a home with a prominent porch and porch swing. (Arnulfo Maldonado designed it enticingly, with central doors to the interior.)
Now that Ursula, diabetic, has lost the use of her left eye and is wearing a patch, she reckons a pre-reunion’s enough for her. One expected guest, Simon (never seen), lets her know without giving a reason that he’s skipping the event, Four others are eager. Caitlin (Susannah Flood), now married but husbandless for the evening, and Emilio (Caleb Eberhardt), who’s been living abroad for the last while, arrive first and do whatever they can to make Ursula change her mind.
The initial three get to gabbing, the conversation pleasant, though superficial. Nevertheless, the exchanges as they move about the porch and front steps are cheerful, touching, unhurried. They’re instantly real people, sounding as if they’ve merely wandered in from the street so an audience can eavesdrop. They’re played so effectively that Jacob-Jenkins and director Eric Ting immediately succeed in establishing palpable realism.
Full disclosure: By this point in the intermissionless play I was firmly in Jacobs-Jenkins’ corner and was ready to rank this drama with An Octoroon, the play that put him on the map. But — and this is a big But — the nuanced action I was taking in fooled me into forgetting the well-pronounced reunion-specific template.
I suspect that somewhere there’s an approach to reunion pieces that skirts the template. I don’t know what it is, but a reviewer doesn’t need to know. It’s the playwright’s wheelhouse, and Jacobs-Jenkins hasn’t located it.
After his perfect introductory scenes, he does what I should have seen coming — and possibly other onlookers did. He proceeds to Ursula, Caitlin, and Emilio as they’re prompted to bring up, maybe gently at first, misunderstandings and secrets from all those many earlier days.
Then he brings on Kristina (Shannon Tyo), a frustrated anesthesiologist, and Francisco (Bobby Moreno), currently a drifter not previously part of the reuniting group. As it happens, Ursula, Caitlin, Emilio, and Kristina are pre-reuniting as a onetime clique they called M.E.R.G.E., standing for Multi-Ethnic-Reject-Group. Francisco wasn’t a member, just a sometime hanger-on that a few of them did consider member enough.
Unfortunately, Emilio adamantly does not, going after Kristina for bringing Francisco, a heavy drinker and loudmouth. Their animus is hardly the only intramural contretemps here. Ursula quickly tires of being coaxed to change her mind about a reunion to which they’re going in a hired limousine.
The limousine pretense, intended to be jokey, is another bone of contention. Eventually, they’re all deep in a scuffling roundelay. Kristina, declaring it’s her one rare night to cut loose, gets so drunk she risks blacking out. Francisco goes on at least one rampage. Caitlin and Emilio argue over their confusing romantic history, as well as hers with Francisco. Though brushing off the high-school couplings, Caitlin seems less ready to deny it outright when intimately reviewing old times face-to-face with Francisco. In other words, possible comeuppances appear to be scattered around. Who or how many get their comeuppance is something Jacobs-Jenkins leaves for spectators to decide.
What all the verbal and physical confrontations reaching their pinnacles leads to won’t be spilled, such as who does and doesn’t end up in that hired limo. (Lighting designer Amith Chandrashaker brings it on.) Nevertheless, the plot trajectory has realism veering into heightened drama careening into melodrama.
The actors are uniformly excellent, underplaying craftily when able. There’s the temptation to cite one among equals, but giving in to it only ends up having to choose among five equals. That’s to say, there’s Flood, but then again there’s Eberhardt or Moreno or Bradford or Tyo.
Definitely not incidentally, The Comeuppance features another theatrical element overlooked here until right now. Initially, Chandrashaker’s lights go up on Emilio addressing the audience. He announces himself with many names, including Anubis, the god representing death. (Uh-oh.) Thanks to sound designer Palmer Hefferan, his speech eerily reverberates.
In turn, the other actors all are eventually handed similar in-one speeches, indicating previous persons have apparently invaded each of the characters. Hmm. What are they meant to represent? Is Jacob-Jenkins offering some more profound observation about, say, reincarnation? If so, the message comes across as confusing, perplexing, even eventually gratuitous. Oh, well.
The Comeuppance opened June 5, 2023, at Signature Center and runs through June 25. Tickets and information: signaturetheatre.org
