Razor-sharp, ice cold, meaner than a box of snakes, and VERY funny. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s thermonuclear family drama goes off with the force of a fifteen-kiloton bomb. We’re in a plantation mansion in Alabama, the family patriarch has died, the house is rotting at the seams, and his three children are sorting through the house’s contents and getting ready to put the place up for auction. The discovery of an album of photographs of lynchings, and then a box full of – let’s put this delicately – associated memorabilia is the catalyst for a series of explosive revelations. To say too much more would be to give too much away; every character has some kind of secret, and of course the defining feature of this kind of play is that by the end, every secret has been exposed. The shockwaves keep coming, and continue even after the actors have all left the stage; Ola Ince’s perfectly-pitched production is a two-hour white-knuckle ride, and it’s fascinating to see how Jacobs-Jenkins uses the framework of a one-set family drama to construct an explosive critique of the way white (southern) Americans interact with black America’s history. This is one of those plays where you’ll come out wanting to buy the script, so save a little money and buy it with your programme as you go in (there’s a combo deal). As Toni, the (astonishingly) embittered oldest sibling, Monica Dolan is first among equals amid a superb cast – she somehow manages to make you feel for Toni despite the character’s rage (and in one scene, blatant racism), AND to make you laugh. I could gush for several more paragraphs, but you’ve got the point already: this is as good as anything I’ve ever seen at the Donmar.
Saving the word, one apostrophe at a time. 