The Comeuppance

by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins

A hauntingly surreal play that plumbs the depths of a group of close friends reuniting for the first time in decades. Twenty years after graduating from a Catholic academy in Washington, DC, a group of old friends gathers on a porch to pregame their high school reunion. Bonded by a shared sense of alienation and by the traumatic events of their high school years, including the Columbine massacre and 9/11, as well as their own self-proclaimed “Multi-Ethnic Reject” status, the friends are nonetheless surprised to find their memories of core teenage experiences no longer match up. What they do share is a sense that their lives have been continually put on hold by one tragedy or another, up to and including the still-lingering Covid-19 pandemic. Haunting the group is the specter of Death, who serially inhabits each character throughout the play to reveal the substance beneath their chatter. As the friends’ competing versions of their teenage years lead to an increasingly charged encounter, they find themselves facing the difficult reckoning that their past actions may have irrevocably sealed their present fates.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Fiction, Theatre

120 pages, Paperback

Expected publication May 5, 2026

Reviews

[Doug · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5, rounded up.

BJ-J continues to be one of the most interesting and provocative contemporary US playwrights - and this recent addition to his canon doesn't belie that label. Critics, perhaps unfairly, called it a 'Big Chill' update, and it does tread over some familiar ground in depicting the 20th reunion of a group of diverse HS chums. But it also is ultra-contemporary, depicting especially how the last five years with the twin disasters of Covid and DJT have undermined the progress made in the first decade of the new millennium.

Two things I am not QUITE sure about are the use of Death 'inhabiting' each character in turn - although I suspect that works better in performance than on the page (apparently, the 2023 Chicago premiere utilized some vocal pyrotechnics to delineate when the characters are 'possessed') - and the character of Simon remaining an off-stage voice: since he has one rather longish scene with Emilio late in the play, I think I would opt for having him either on the side of the stage or at least as a video presence.

One intriguing thing I liked is that all the characters had belonged to a school group they called M.E.R.GE. - for Multi-Ethnic Rejects Group Experience - but the playwright does not delineate what race each character should be. Francisco/Paco should obvs. be Latino of some sort, but that leaves wide open casting of the others.

BJ-J has another play ('Purpose') scheduled for a Bway run in 2025, but one hopes this makes the transfer also.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/05/th...
https://nystagereview.com/2023/06/05/...
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https://newyorktheater.me/2023/06/05/...
https://www.newyorktheatreguide.com/r...
https://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/th...
https://www.theatermania.com/news/rev...
https://www.talkinbroadway.com/page/o...

[Mai · Rating 4 out of 5]

Branden Jacob-Jenkins is one of my favourite playwrights of our time!! Really good play. Laughed the whole time.

[pastareadsplays · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was told this was a response to “Heroes Of the Fourth Turning” but that doesn’t feel right at all. More Breakfast Club part 2, a classic monologues-about-the-past play. And BJJ can write a great monologue! I have a strong aversion towards any art that talks about the pandemic, so the fact that I could stomach any of this is a testament to his talent as a writer. The play itself isn’t really anything, I think? There’s a particular “playwright show and tell” habit in modern drama — a playwright learns several unrelated, interesting fact or anecdote (that, at least to me, feel born on or circulated around the internet), and strings them together to form a script. The Comeuppance is more layered and interesting than the simplest version of that type of new play, but for my money still falls into the bucket of an “anecdote mosaic”. I recognize these characters, and have more familiarity with them than I initially thought, and maybe my own disinterest in the high school squad I was a part of lessened the intrigue of the group drama. But maybe I wasn’t really shocked by anything. And maybe I didn’t care about any of that that much. I trust the Death device could work under the right direction and performance, however I’m very skeptical about FaceTime onstage. I wanna read Purpose, anyone have an advanced copy??

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Uh I liked certain parts of this a lot but overall with no intermission I think this play stood no chance against feeling like it was dragging so the end was a lot less impactful. It felt like the rough draft for Everybody. Still a nice slice of life play with lots of goodies in it

[Miranda Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best post-Covid play I have read.

[Kayden Merritt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eh…

The dialogue felt poor; the plot, meandering; the characters, generic; the devices, under utilized.


Probably my least favorite of his

[Amandanoel · Rating 4 out of 5]

After seeing the show this weekend I wanted to go back and read certain sections/understand how they were described in the script. It’s a solid story, particularly moving for those of us in the same age range as the characters, but I think when it came to the play I saw the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Some insanely beautiful pieces and then things that feel overemphasized or out of place. Still, I loved it and I really am so glad I got to see it

[Bobby Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nasty secrets come out among high school friends pre-gaming for a reunion. Emilio seems to have a huge chip on his shoulder, and I'm not really sure why. The memory about the epileptic girl seizing on the dance floor was shocking and set up so well that I laughed in spite of myself.

[Amy Hudson · Rating 5 out of 5]

i laughed so much but i also cried. most touching and relevant piece of theatre i’ve read in a long while

[John Perine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Feels like a much darker version of The Pavilion with a 20 year reunion narrated by an otherworldly force. However, pales in comparison to Jacobs-Jenkins’ other work.

[Kevin Ober · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best theater experiences I’ve had. I am gratified that reading it, it was even more satisfying than I remembered.

[Lenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jacobs-Jenkins is THE playwright of our times. His relentless pursuit of class, race, family dysfunction, hidden lies . . . all of his plays are amazing.