Australian premiere

When family reunions go wrong. Very wrong.

In the tradition of August: Osage County, this dark comedy looks at the US South’s buried history through the wildly entertaining story of one dysfunctional family. With a formidable cast including Sam Worthington (Avatar, Somersault), Lucy Bell (Griffin Theatre Company’s Splinter, Foxtel’s Fighting Season) and Mandy McElhinney (Mosquitoes, Channel 9's Love Child), Appropriate takes its place amongst the American classics while subtly undermining them.

In a crumbling plantation home somewhere in Arkansas, a family comes together to pick through their recently deceased father’s hoard of possessions, a seemingly indiscriminate mix of junk and historical artefacts.

With the house’s imminent sale exerting pressure on everyone present, old tensions begin to rise up like ghosts while new dysfunctions are just starting to take shape. The discovery of an unexpected and troubling photo album forces a family to reconcile with a man they’re desperate to remember and a history they’d rather forget.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is one of America’s most exciting and lauded playwrights. Twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and a recipient of a prestigious MacArthur ‘Genius’ Fellowship, he is the master of thought-provoking and engaging pieces that shine new light on familiar stories.

This production, equal parts ghost story and family comedy, will be directed by giant of Australian theatre Wesley Enoch. Appropriate is an edge-of-your-seat tour through contemporary America’s troubled relationship with race, the truth and the things we leave behind.

“Brilliantly sophisticated, often bitingly funny and it confirms Jacobs-Jenkins as one of the sharpest young US dramatists writing today.” Financial Times UK