GableStage Takes Audiences Inside a Southern Plantation House For ‘Appropriate’

Seated, from left, Brandon Lafleur as Rhys, Rachel Burttram as Toni, Lorenzo Garcia as Ainsley, and Cecile Etzbach as Cassidy. Standing, Natalie Donahue McMahon as River, Tony Larkin as Frank/Franz, Mark H. Dold as Bo and Suzanne Ankrum in GableStage’s “Appropriate” opening Friday, Jan. 31 through Sunday, Feb. 23, inside the Biltmore Hotel, Coral Gables. (Photo by Magnus Stark/courtesy of GableStage)

It’s summer in Arkansas and members of the Lafayette family arrive after the brood’s patriarch has died. They are ready to sift through what’s left in the Southern plantation home, perhaps sell the place, split the money, and do everything most families are tasked with when someone passes away.

“Appropriate” opened on Broadway in December of 2023 and, after a demand for ticket sales, moved to another theater for an extension, finally closing at the end of June 2024. Only six months since its bow on Broadway, the play gets its Miami premiere at GableStage opening Friday, Jan. 31 and running through Sunday, Feb. 23.

Producing artistic director Bari Newport first read Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ play “Appropriate” in 2013. Now she’s bringing it to GableStage only six months after it closed on Broadway. (Photo by Magnus Stark/courtesy of GableStage)

Bari Newport, GableStage’s producing artistic director, says she read the original version of the play in 2013 when she was leading the Penobscot Theater Company in Bangor, Maine. “At the time, it wasn’t right for that theater; the many, many layers didn’t make themselves known on the page,” she recalls. When she saw it on Broadway, she noticed that some “nips and tucks” had been made, which “helped bring out” more of the comedy. “It’s really quite funny and poignant. I believe it’s very much an actor’s piece and an ensemble piece. Each one of the characters is somewhat of an archetype and I try to find the Achilles heel of each of them.”

Written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, a Black playwright, “Appropriate” deals with a white family faced with denying or profiting from a legacy of racism. While the play is a feat getting eight actors together to create the perfect ensemble (two child actors are in the production, eight-year-old South Florida actor Lorenzo Garcia and Cecile Etzbach, a 13-year-old student at Ransom Everglades), there are other mountains to climb to create the realistic atmosphere.

For the company to put “Appropriate” inside the theater has been a technical undertaking, admits Newport. “It is pushing us in a lot of different ways to be more ambitious technically. It’s one thing to design it and then it’s another thing to build it,” she says, giving credit “where credit is due” to her technical team behind the scenes.

Newport says audiences will be “absolutely astounded by the set.” While the New York production created a cavernous, high-ceiling Southern mansion, Newport says the antebellum Arkansas plantation had to be entirely rethought for the GableStage space, housed since 1998 in the former horse stables at the historic Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables.

“We only have width. We don’t have much depth,” confides Newport, about the approximately 140-seat theater.

The set, created by GableStage’s resident designer Frank J Oliva, is built out into the audience with the carpeted area of the floor covered with wood. The chandelier, which hangs in the house, is over the audience. “It’s about family roots and tree roots and history repeating itself. I wanted to make sure that the audience weren’t passive observers; they are truly sitting inside the house,” she says.

Rachel Burttram returns to GableStage as Toni in “Appropriate” after her debut with the company as Nora in “A Doll’s House, Part 2” in 2023. (Photo by Magnus Stark/courtesy of GableStage)

Rachel Burttram last appeared at GableStage in 2023 as Nora in Luca Hnath’s “A Doll’s House, Part 2.” She’s playing the role of Antoinette “Toni” Lafayette, which won Broadway actress Sarah Paulson, who originated the role, a Tony Award.

Toni is the oldest of the three Lafayette siblings, along with brother Bo (played by Mark H. Dold, last seen in GableStage’s “The Lehman Trilogy”) and estranged kid brother Frank, who now goes by Franz (played by Tony Larkin). She asserts herself as the matriarch, a sharp-tongued, no-holds-barred caretaker who remains loyal to her father especially when discoveries are made in the home that have everyone questioning his character.

Buttram, who was raised in Birmingham, Alabama, and has recently moved back to her hometown to be closer to her aging parents, says she relates to Toni’s over-protectiveness of her father.

“I was talking to some people about the play recently and I was fascinated because I just assumed everyone’s dynamics with their father were what I knew. All Southern women, if they have a good relationship with their father, well there’s this special bond, especially if you’re the eldest daughter,” says the actress. “That’s my life, right? He wants you to be tough because he probably wanted a son, and so you do have that toughness, and maybe you are a little bossy and you’re not afraid to have an opinion.”

Minneapolis-based Tony Larkin makes his debut with GableStage as Frank/Franz in “Appropriate.” (Photo by Magnus Stark/courtesy of GableStage)

Buttram says as she was reading the play before starting rehearsals, she said to herself, ” ‘I have to have really deep, serious conversations with my dad around this play,’ ” adding that he was “completely fascinated.”

While it does fit the mold of an American family drama a la Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” or Traci Letts’ Pulitzer Prize-winning “August: Osage County,” Newport says it’s more of a satire on the genre.

Newport says that with all the drama that is inherent in “Appropriate,” she believes it shouldn’t be “played” as a drama. “It’s a satire or a dramedy if anything, but it’s very much a satire.”

When a book of photographs is found among the dead father’s belongings, it brings out long-held resentments among other turmoils within the family.

“What the play is really about,” says Newport, “are the people in the book who are not on stage. In many, many inappropriate ways, the play is a ride. It’s a fun night at the theater because it’s so wrong in so many right ways.”

WHAT: “Appropriate,” the Miami premiere by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins

WHERE: GableStage in the Biltmore Hotel, 1200 Anastasia Ave., Coral Gables 

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. 2 p.m. Wednesday and Sunday. Opens Friday, Jan. 31 through Sunday, Feb. 23.

COST: $40 and $50, all with additional $10 service fee (discounts for students, teachers, artists, military and groups). 

INFORMATION: 305-445-1119 or gablestage.org

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