Review of Appropriate on Broadway

In February 2024, I had purchased tickets to see Appropriate at Second Stage Theatre, over at the Helen Hayes, before it closed up its official run. I had really wanted to see Elle Fanning in her Broadway debut, and the play itself looked really great. It was also only $30, as I had purchased the tickets through Second Stage’s program where young people can get $30 orchestra seats.

It was a tragic fate that my show was cancelled that weekend due to COVID-19 an hour before showtime. I was so sad, and hoped that the rumors it was transferring to the Belasco were true. While I was sad to see Elle Fanning go for her other commitments, I purchased tickets immediately for April.

Now, I sat in the back row of the mezzanine at the Belasco, towards the left. I wouldn’t recommend the back row because it was noisy with the ushers moving back and forth in the middle of the show. Plus, this is my fault, but the guy in front of me kept leaning and blocked the center stage with his head. I should’ve said something.

Anyways, here’s my review of the show!

A twisted family tale about buried resentment and racism.

This is a show about the death of a patriarch, who owned a Southern plantation home in the middle of Arkansas. River and Franz sneak into the home in the middle of the night from Oregon, where they plan to relive his childhood in the home. He fled as a young man, and was never even invited to his father’s funeral.

They’re caught, and his older sister Toni yells at him, telling him to get out. She claims he cannot stay there, but he asserts his rights by saying that he owns a third of the house until tomorrow, when the auction to sell off the estate happens. She relents, as she knows it’s true.

The next morning, we meet the rest of the family. There’s Bo, the other brother, and his wife Rachel and their kids. Things really start going awry in this already tense household when one of the kids discovers a photo book full of pictures depicting lynchings in the South.

Rachel thinks that their father was a racist, reflecting on her anecdotes of how he treated her. She’s Jewish, and he would not treat her normally like other white people, nor her parents at the wedding. Toni gets extremely pissed off and says some things that are also offensive to her, leading to even more friction.

We learn a massive debt was passed onto the kids as well, leaving things in an already worse situation. If this estate sale does not happen, they are kind of screwed—let’s be real.

Toni keeps denying that the father is a racist, and everything keeps escalating throughout the course of the play—there’s a lot to unpack throughout this story, and I truly think it’s worth the wild ride.

This is set in a massive house with impressive design—I don’t usually care for Broadway sets, but I found the set design in this show to be fascinating, as well as the lighting. There are some incredible moments, especially in the final scenes of the play, involving what happens around this house.

Dark comedy is also a major crux in this play, which is about a dysfunctional family with some serious problems. Everyone who’s a main character in this play kind of sucks, and when we get to the entire “let’s sell these racist photos to collectors” plot point, that’s where we can start to realize this.

Overall Thoughts

I really enjoyed this play, and am convinced that Sarah Paulson should just be handed the Tony. That woman acted almost everyone off of the stage, and this was a really well acted play in general.

That said, Corey Stoll is also fantastic. I do wonder about if some of these scenes could be trimmed, but I see why the decision was made to keep certain things in. My boss told me it was lengthier before when she saw it, but I think I saw a more edited version in general.

I can also see how people might not like this play: it’s very nuanced in the way where the playwright doesn’t explicitly say these people are trying to profit off of racism. You have to watch this and make judgements yourself, as these characters will criticize each other but not themselves.

Go see it before it closes!

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