I wish we had London theatre culture in the States
Acclaimed American playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins talks to Nick Clark about black out nights and Bake Off
ADECADE ago, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins wrote a play about a high school reunion only to put it away in a drawer in frustration. Fast forward to a recent alumni event for his own high school, and the feted American playwright learned that a 10th of his class had died in the intervening 20 years. “That is kind of an outrageous number because none of us are 40 yet. A couple from Covid, some suicides, some strange illnesses.”
And so he returned to the drawer and wrote The Comeuppance, which opens tonight at the Almeida Theatre. It feels at once a deeply personal take on friendship, mortality and the pernicious nature of memory; but it’s also a state-of-the-nation play about issues from broken politics to collapsing healthcare. Most of all, it seeks to grapple with the impact of Covid. “I thought, we haven’t had closure on what was a multi-year trauma for the world.”
When we meet, the 39-year-old — described by the New York Times as “one of [the US’s] most original and illuminating writers” — is chipper. In a knit jumper and khaki trousers, he is relaxed and quick to laugh — even as the chat veers into the morbid.
He tells me that during Covid he reconnected with people he hadn’t seen in years and was constantly surprised “at the shape of their lives when stacked against the version of them I knew” — the urge to reach out for many, he adds, was partly a “memento mori thing”, a newfound awareness of their mortality.
Indeed, Death is an actual character in the play. “It’s there because it has to do with a feeling of coming out of the pandemic where everyone was really death haunted, but no one was talking about it,” he says. “It wasn’t just the virus, but we were watching videos of black men being murdered, George Floyd being among them. There’s a human urge to pretend death doesn’t exist but it’s always in the room.”
The Comeuppance of the title is, to quote one character in the play, “the age of bad choices seeking their consequences”. Part of that refers to geo-political and social issues coming home to roost, but another part is personal. “The Comeuppance is also the idea that if you drink a lot in your twenties you’re feeling it now,” he laughs.
The play also captures that feeling of possibilities that once existed now fading. It references the German word (of course there’s a German word) torschlusspanik, which translates as ‘door closing panic’.
“I love shows like The Great British Bake Off or The Great Pottery Throw Down,” he says smiling. “There was a time in my life when I watched those shows and was like, ‘I can do that.’ And I remember I crossed the threshold where I thought ‘I’m too old. There’s not enough time for me to get as good as I need to be to do that.’ That’s how I think of torschlusspanik.” Growing up in Washington, Jacobs-Jenkins was surrounded by theatre and kids’ cultural activities. He spent half his year with his grandmother in Arkansas and she used to write amateur plays based on bible stories. “That may have planted some seed in me.”
He studied anthropology at Princeton and “only recently” thought of playwriting as a job, he laughs. “I didn’t believe that it was going to be a real thing in my life until I was approaching 30.” Before then, he had also worked at The New Yorker and had ideas of going to law school. It was An Octoroon, written in 2014, that got him noticed. Over here, this searing critique on racial stereotypes ran at the Orange Tree in 2017 then at the National Theatre.
London has embraced his work: Gloria ran at Hampstead Theatre in 2017 and Appropriate went to the Donmar Warehouse two years later. Now he’s at the Almeida. “I’m blown away as much as anybody. I love London, the theatre culture here — I wish we had something closer to it in the States.”
He won the Evening Standard Theatre Award for Most Promising Playwright for An Octoroon, which came after Obie awards in the US. It was then a teacher at Juilliard, where he studied on the playwrighting course, told him: “You need to acknowledge you’re a playwright. Write your plays and shut up.”
Appropriate is now on Broadway, starring Sarah Paulson.
How does that feel? “It feels great in some ways as,” he pauses and laughs “as a middle finger at certain people. My whole career people have said, ‘Your plays are too weird, your plays will never make money, you’re not a commercial writer’… and then you open the show on Broadway and you break the house record for most sales. It’s so satisfying to get that validation because it makes you feel like your self-esteem was not delusional.”
We talk about ‘Black Out nights’, performances aimed at bringing non-white audiences into the theatre, which has caused a culture wars storm in a teacup over here (though tellingly not in the US) with even Prime Minister Rishi Sunak criticising the practice for being exclusionary (it’s not). “It’s just a misreading of what those nights are. In America we have a strong black audience that buses in to see The Color
People said my plays were too weird — then I opened on Broadway and broke the record for most sales
In America we have a strong black audience that buses in to see plays... it’s a privilege to have that audience
Purple or whatever… it’s an audience that’s a privilege to have so a Black Out night is not that uncommon of an idea. I’m not averse to it.”
Eminent critic Michael Billington once said Jacobs-Jenkins likes to push his plays to the limit. Is that true? “The only advice I live under is from Tennessee Williams, who says, ‘The only advice I give is to not bore people.’ That’s the baseline. Then build on top of that. Then the limits are fun to explore.”
His day job is still teaching theatre at Yale (and he does some TV too). He says that students talk to him about how they would like to write subtly. “I’m like, ‘Why write subtly, who cares? Subtle? Who cares? Why have I paid $30 to see you be subtle?”
I ask what success looks like in theatre. “I feel unfortunately, I’ve internalised that adage, ‘You’ll never make a living but you can make a killing.’”
Then he laughs, mock considering success. “I want people to think I’m a master, which will happen, just give me a few decades... I just want to hear someone say, ‘He’s a master playwright!’” He may have been joking, but more than a few already do.
• The Comeuppance runs at the Almeida