The Comeuppance, Almeida Theatre review ★★★★★

Searing, sinister, tragicomic and, in 2024, wholly current, the latest play from hotshot US playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Appropriate, An Octoroon) is, on the surface, about a group of former friends getting together for their high school reunion. They reveal the scars life's given them since they last saw each other and wonder when they made the choices that now define them. But through his characters’ revelations about their present circumstances, memories and disappointments, Jacobs-Jenkins paints an all-American snapshot of a generation shaped by the collective trauma of Covid, the Columbine massacre and 9/11.

On the Washington DC porch of host Ursula (a quietly devastating Tamara Lawrance), the former honours students – who dubbed their clan the multi-ethnic reject group MERG – assemble to pre-drink a jungle juice punch before taking a party limo to their old school. It’s not prom night though, it’s their 20-year reunion.

Emilio (Anthony Welsh, luxuriating over the play’s best lines), whose trajectory is not dissimilar to Jacobs-Jenkins’ own, is now an artist and a father living in Berlin. Having come off Facebook, he’s here to see in person “the brutal beat-ups of time” on his old classmates. Stay-at-home stepmum Caitlin (a convincing Yolanda Kettle) is looking forward to a night away from her older, uber right-wing husband, while doctor Kristina (a superb turn from Katie Leung) is there to get pissed. Caitlin’s arsehole ex-boyfriend Paco (a volatile Ferdinand Kingsley), returned from a PTSD-inducing stint in the armed forces, has turned up uninvited. Meanwhile Ursula, who has been sidelined by her ailments, is threatening not to go.

Jacobs-Jenkins’ sharp writing is peppered with familiar pandemic references, but Covid-19 isn’t the only shared experience to have heightened these characters’ awareness of their mortality. As they swap anecdotes and regress into their old group roles, we’re reminded of the unreliability of memory; so out of sync are their recollections and perceptions of one another that Emilio wonders out loud whether they knew each other at all.

It’s pertinent stuff that, in this reviewer’s opinion, would have been better left within naturalistic parameters, but Jacobs-Jenkins’ introduces a supernatural element. Death personified slips into the body of each character, freezing the scene and leaving the audience to guess which member of the party it’s come to claim. It fits with Jacobs-Jenkins’ point that his characters have reached the age that “shit shows up”, but is woefully cheesy. And why does each of death’s personas have a British accent?

The supernatural aside, Eric Ting’s production is tight and intelligent. It plays out entirely on the front porch of Ursela’s home, designed by Arnulfo Maldonado with all the little details, from a swing chair to a limp American flag. Natasha Chivers’ lighting suspends the evening in eerie darkness, while a neat trick aided presumably by visual effects duo Skylar Fox and William Houstoun sends the eagerly anticipated limo revving into the relatively small space.

Bitingly funny and abruptly sad, this momentary portrait of five people trapped inside their own decisions is a reminder life is fragile and temporary.