“The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” goes the oft-quoted line from Southern novelist William Faulkner. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ searing, Tony Award–winning family drama Appropriate, given a pitch-perfect production at Olney Theatre Center, illustrates just how right Faulkner was. In the adult siblings of the Lafayette family, fighting over the crumbling remains of the ancestral home and unveiling deeply disturbing truths about themselves and their heritage, Jacobs-Jenkins gives us a portrait both intimate and universal of the ways that America’s violent racial past continues to haunt its present. The secrets that siblings Toni, Bo, and Franz attempt to uncover (and to hide from one another) demand some kind of reckoning, but what that means and how — or whether — to do it is as opaque to them as it has been, in large part, for the nation to which they belong. What is appropriate, the play seems to ask, and what, in our nation’s long, complicated racial history, have we appropriated? Under the taut, skillful direction of Olney Artistic Director Jason Loewith, Jacobs-Jenkins’ claustrophobic family drama pulls the audience in from the very beginning. Theatergoers enter through the vine-strewn portico of the rundown plantation house and sit facing each other on either side of an immensely cluttered living room. Stuffed deer heads fight for space beside ancient computer monitors and boxes overflowing with odds and ends. Stern ancestors look down from antique paintings on the walls. (Scenic designer Nadir Bey does a fabulous job evoking the oppressive essence of the house.) The buzz of thousands of cicadas rises to a fever pitch in the dim light. The house seems alive, as indeed one character suggests it is.  Dina Thomas as Rachael and Kimberly Gilbert as Toni face off in ‘Appropriate.’ Photo by Teresa Castracane Photography. We get to know the Lafayette siblings over the course of a sweltering summer weekend as they gather to sell off what remains of the family’s Arkansas plantation, pay the $500,000 mortgage left by their recently deceased father, and hopefully, reap some financial benefit for themselves. But things turn, dare one say, “south” as soon as brother Franz makes an unexpected entrance through the living room window. With him is his much younger girlfriend, River, a New Age type who immediately senses the pain the house seems to contain. There are stories here, but not good ones. Franz, it turns out, is a recovering addict and self-professed man-child whose troubling past includes impregnating an underage girl. He has returned — after a ten-year absence — to ask forgiveness for these misdeeds and to show that he has changed. But elder sister Toni is having none of it. “You are the same person you’ve always been,” she declares, asserting that Franz has only returned in hopes of collecting an inheritance. “There’s nothing new.” Toni has her own secrets. Her marriage has ended, she is estranged from son Rhys, and implication in a troubling episode involving him has cost her her job. Moreover, she is fiercely angry that, as the only woman in the family, the role of caregiver for their dying father and for Franz (in his earlier, addicted stage) fell to her. Women have only so much “sweetness” in them, she tells River in one of the play’s more poignant moments. “Don’t give it all away” in taking care of everyone else, she warns. Middle child Bo seems to have it most together, but he is also the most eager to wrap things up, leave the South (and his siblings) behind, and get back to life in New York with wife Rachael and children Cassidy and Ainsley. When the play’s central, horrific revelation comes to light, he is also most eager to put it back in the box — or later, to turn it into profit.  That revelation directly concerns their recently deceased father, Ray, and who he may or may not have been. While Toni, who grieves his loss the most, refuses to accept that Ray, a seemingly liberal white professional, may actually have been a dyed-in-the-wool racist, her brothers are less willing to make any pronouncement. The arguments that ensue pit sibling against sibling, revealing just how wounded each character is and how unwilling each is to face and accept their disturbing patrimony. That these arguments, which culminate in a knock-down, drag-out fight, come to involve all the adult characters, including wife Rachael and girlfriend River, is evidence of the extent to which family secrets impact everyone.  TOP: Dina Thomas as Rachael, Cody Nickell as Bo, Kirsten Cocks as Cassidy, Brigid Wallace Harper as River, and Cole Alex Edelstein as Rhys; ABOVE: Jamie Smithson (Franz) and Brigid Wallace Harper (River) enter the Lafayette family homestead, in ‘Appropriate.’ Photos by Teresa Castracane Photography. A stellar cast brings these wounded characters to life with sympathy and even flourishes of humor. (Despite its heavy subject matter, this play is not a “downer.”) Kimberly Gilbert’s Toni, perhaps the drama’s lead character, is scarred by grief, loss, and bitterness, but determined to preserve the memory of the father she loved and who, as the only surviving parent, was the repository of her own self-identity. Jamie Smithson’s Franz is naïve and culpable, but also deeply authentic. We want to believe that he can change himself as well as the family, which in his childlike way, he attempts to do. Cody Nickell’s Bo is more self-aware, more guarded, and more prepared to close this chapter in his life and his family relationships, only to discover that the pain is raw. Dina Thomas endows wife Rachael with feistiness and a northerner’s circumspect view of what goes on in the South. She keeps her own secrets about Ray. Brigid Wallace Harper’s slightly loopy River is an earnest peacemaker who is certain that people can remake themselves, until a final revelation about fiancé Bo threatens that belief. Cole Alex Edelstein’s adolescent Rhys is fittingly remote, moody, and, it seems, completely aware of what is going on with everybody else. His final parting from cousin Cassidy (Kirsten Cocks) is a model of familial intimacy that the adult siblings are unable to replicate. Nadir Bey’s set immediately immerses the audience in the world the siblings have returned to. (We learn through stage dialogue that they actually grew up, as did Jacobs-Jenkins, in the DC region.) Matthew M. Nielson’s sound design turns a brood of buzzing cicadas into another character in the drama, while his incidental music sets an ominous tone that rises and falls at regular intervals. Danielle Preston clothes the cast perfectly; Bo’s “Plant Daddy” tee shirt telegraphs his past instantly, while girlfriend River’s beads-and-blouse getup elicits stereotypical remarks from Bo about New Agers and Native Americans. Max Doolittle’s light design spookily brings the dilapidated house to life, especially in the play’s final moments, when, as River says earlier, the structure seems to be “trying to tell us something.” Every family has its secrets, of course. Some go with their bearers to the grave, while others are left to deal with them. Whether or not that actually happens is, Appropriate seems to suggest, the difference between being free and being haunted. Running Time: Three hours, including one 15-minute intermission Appropriate plays through April 26, 2026, in the Mulitz-Gudelsky Theatre Lab at Olney Theatre Center, 2001 Olney-Sandy Spring Rd, Olney, MD. Tickets ($52–$116) are available online, by calling the box office at 301-924-3400, or through TodayTix. Discounts for teachers, active military, and first responders are available at olneytheatre.org/discounts.  AppropriateBy Branden Jacobs-JenkinsDirected by Jason Loewith The cast and creative team credits are online here (scroll down). Buy Tickets Discount Tickets ...read more read less