[NEohioPAL] Review of "Appropriate" at Dobama Theatre

[Bob Abelman]

Dobama’s ‘Appropriate’ offers another of Jacobs-Jenkins’ provocative shades of gray



Bob Abelman

Cleveland Jewish News, The News Herald, The Morning Journal

Member, American Theatre Critics Association



The dramatist Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is on a mission to explore what it means to be black in America by provocatively filtering his storytelling through our nation’s predominant whiteness.  



His 2010 “Neighbors,” which was performed last year by convergence-continuum, features a black professor of political philosophy enjoying his white wife and docile suburban lifestyle until a black family wearing the blackface makeup and caricature personas of minstrel show performers moves in next door. 



“An Octoroon,” written in 2014 and performed in 2016 by Dobama Theatre, is an adaptation of an antebellum melodrama about the financial woes that have befallen a Louisiana cotton plantation and its impact on its community of slaves.  



In “Appropriate,” currently on stage at Dobama after premiering Off-Broadway in 2014, another shade of gray is put on display for our consideration.  



For more of this article, go to www.clevelandjewishnews.com/columnists/bob_abelman/
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