Appropriate, Donmar Warehouse

American writer Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is changing and challenging the way we consider race, one bravura play at a time.

He thrilled British audiences and critics with an inversion of 'blackface' in 2014's The Octoroon (Orange Tree Theatre and National Theatre). Now he returns to London with another subversive examination of America's relationship with race, both past and present.

Appropriate comes to the West End' Donmar Warehouse as part of artistic director Michael Longhust's inaugural season. It first ran Off-Broadway in 2014 (just before The Octoroon opened), where it won an Obie Award, was nominated for the Critics Circle prize for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play and was hailed 'very fine, subversively original' by the New York Times.

Up and coming director Ola Ince leads the UK premiere of Appropriate. It stars Monica Dolan, who won at the 2019 Olivier Awards for her performance in All About Eve and is familiar face from TV show Appropriate Adult.

The play follows the Lafayette family as they return to Arkansas to prepare their late father's former slave plantation for an Estate Sale. The 'family gathering after a death' trope is a mainstay of family drama, but Jacobs-Jenkins twists these traditions into something more audacious, as the legacy of slavery and the issue of race haunt the action.

If the excitement and glowing reviews from the US are to be believed, Appropriate is set to a bracingly brilliant exploration of guilt and forgiveness.

Public booking for Appropriate at the Donmar Warehouse opens at 9am on Tuesday 16 April