Washington Post - Recommended
"...Borrowing a page - or is it a chapter? - from Tracy Letts's no-holds-barred domestic dramedy, "August: Osage County," Jacobs-Jenkins constructs the profile of a family inexorably drawn into a bitter confrontation with its past. Intimations of rape, pedophilia, alcoholism and anti-Semitism rise up, as if toxicity leaches naturally out of the rotting walls and piles of junk arranged on Clint Ramos's smashing, Southern Gothic horror show of a set."
DC Theater Arts - Highly Recommended
"...Death does strange things to people. And in familiar circumstances, people struggling with a death in the family will turn on each other in a heartbeat; siblings and relations will treat each other worse than strangers on the street because they know how to cut - and when they do - they cut deep. Continuing in the vein of unearthing America's sordid past in Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company's 34th season: America's Tell-Tale Heart, Director Liesl Tommy brings Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' riveting new work Appropriate to the stage."
DCist - Highly Recommended
"...The all-across-the-board knockout cast (seriously, everyone does brave, credible work: Beth Hylton, Josh Adams, David Bishins, Cole Edelstein, Caitlin McColl, Eli Schulman) makes this worth patronizing on its own. But it's also important, I think, when we continue to see this kind of racism-denial resurface, over and over, just about every week. Where? Oh, I dunno...sometimes in certain references to "gagging" in certain columns by supposedly liberal columnists."
MetroWeekly - Highly Recommended
"...indeed, there may be a few other odd moments here where the axis wobbles, but they fade into insignificance in the face of Jacob-Jenkins's incisive and uncompromising quest for so many truths. And whatever one makes of these truths, for he does not dictate it, there is one universal: No matter how elaborate one's personal myth, there is always someone there to level it - and more often than not it's family."
Washington City Paper - Recommended
"...Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is a young writer whose intelligence comes blistering off the page; an unmistakably contemporary voice who's cheerfully admitted a fascination with the humid histrionics of Tennessee Williams; and a 20-something, D.C.-rooted African-American button-pusher whose blackness manifests itself chiefly, at least in this Southern Gothic sizzler, in his sly refusal to preach much about race."
Washingtonian - Highly Recommended
"...Director Liesl Tommy deserves credit for the play's impeccable timing-a scene with Rhys gazing inscrutably at the photos while alone on the couch is exquisite in its quiet pacing, and the show's longer second act never drags. But so much comes in the way of revelation in the first few scenes that little is left to shock the audience as the play moves towards its conclusion, although little Ainsley appears at one point in a moment that genuinely jars. The sense of contamination within the house is emphasized constantly: There's a graveyard right outside that's repeatedly referenced by the characters as affecting the sale of the property, and the lake outside is described as algae-and bug-ridden."
MD Theatre Guide - Somewhat Recommended
"...Unfortunately, the play fails to address adequately its central question: how is it that intelligent people continue to deny the existence of what stares them boldly in the face? In Appropriate's case, that is old Southern style racism and its telling artifacts. Perhaps, if these siblings had better memories of their father and his telltale expressions of hate and murder, they might have more clearly denied and argued about the obvious conclusions."
DCTheatreScene - Recommended
Appropriate, Woolly Mammoth’s new dark-as-pitch comedy, delivers a theatrical gut-punch of roiling family drama and erupting emotion set against the backdrop of a crumbling southern mansion. DC-born playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and a surprising cast explore the struggles of the dysfunctional Lafayette family as they wage war over their deceased father’s estate and uncover buried secrets that threaten to rip their clan apart.
