Because they could not stop for Death,
He kindly stops for them. 

“Them” being the five onstage characters in The Comeuppance, the newest dark comedy by MacArthur Fellowship winner Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. At key moments throughout the play, the lights dim, and each actor takes turns addressing the audience as Death with a Capital D, as poet Emily Dickinson conceived him. It’s as if the theater holds only Death and the audience. 

And immortality.   

It’s not that everybody dies, but in this play about friends reunited for their 20th high school reunion, Death gets to comment on each character’s close brushes, calamities, and poor life choices. And, before they embark by limo to a suburban Washington hotel ballroom, this troubled sextet has plenty of regrets to rehash—from not asking out the right girl to having “too many fucking kids” with the wrong guy.

Woolly Mammoth and Philadelphia’s Wilma Theater co-produced The Comeuppance after the play enjoyed runs in London and off-Broadway last year. Woolly’s newish artistic director, Maria Manuela Goyanes, has continued the tradition of the company debuting new plays by Jacobs-Jenkins, a D.C.-area native who Goyanes first met when he was a New Yorker editorial assistant and she was an associate producer at the Public Theater. The Comeuppance is Jacobs-Jenkins’ first major play set in the DMV, and after seeing his other excellent works set elsewhere, including An Octoroon, Gloria, and Appropriate, it’s fabulous to see him come home. 

The Comeuppance will resonate with many DMV natives, if “resonate” is a euphemism for keeping you up all night. Consider that a trigger warning for people whose coming-of-age memories will roughly align with the characters onstage. (There’s a “content transparency” list on Woolly’s website, which anyone considering attending should review.) Not up for reminiscing about where you were on 9/11, and recalling the sinking feeling in your stomach while you waited to hear if a loved one who worked at the Pentagon was safe? Maybe skip this play about the Class of 2002 from (the fictional) St. Anthony’s High School. That also goes for anyone who has been affected by a mass shooting. These characters discuss at length how teenage life changed before and after two students killed 12 of their classmates and a teacher in Colorado. 

“People were scared! He was totally Columbine…ey?” Emilio (Jordan Bellow), the cool artist in the group, says about a “spookily quiet” classmate who joined the JROTC.

“Columbiney!” his friend Ursula (Alana Raquel Bowers) says.

The instant you hear the invented adjective, you’ll know exactly what Jacobs-Jenkins means. That’s the market he’s cornered as a playwright: so smart, so funny, and so incisive in a way that makes you chortle while worrying if it’s OK to laugh. Other playwrights handily deploy zeitgeisty zingers, including Jocelyn Bioh, whose Jaja’s African Hair Braiding is now running at Arena Stage. What sets Jacobs-Jenkins apart, however, is the completeness of his work; the way he gradually parses out answers to questions dangled in front of the audience. Why is Ursula wearing an eye patch? Are those two characters exes? Who here is going to die? 

Listening for answers fuels the play’s dramatic tension. With the notable exceptions of the big ontological questions he’s asking about life and death. Those you’ll have to wrestle with yourself. 

All the action in The Comeuppance takes place on Ursula’s porch—once her grandmother’s porch, as her friends remember it. (There’s no locale specified other than Prince George’s County; my guess is Greenbelt.) Death has recently stopped for Ursula’s grandmother, and is lurking about as Ursula’s own health declines, worrying her friends. Others have faced challenges tied to marriage and careers. Francisco (Jaime Maseda) and his cousin Kristina (Taysha Marie Canales) both joined the military after watching the planes crash on 9/11, and in Kristina’s case, so Uncle Sam would pay for medical school. The two went from being “the honors kids,” checking on classmates in crisis, to serving on the front lines.  

“You guys are the honors students, you’re in charge,” Simon recalls the principal saying. “As if we weren’t also being traumatized.” (Simon, voiced by Maseda, has bailed on attending the reunion but calls his friends from New York to reminisce.)

Shortly before the quintet is set to depart the porch, Emilio, who has been living in Europe, goes on a tirade about the military industrial complex, eliciting a disturbing reaction from Francisco, who survived multiple deployments and suffers from PTSD. 

At issue—and this may cut deep for local audiences—is that before George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, many liberal-leaning locals had a less complicated relationship with the U.S. military. I recalled driving onto Bolling Air Force Base to visit my friend whose dad was a general, or dropping cookies off for midshipmen pals at the Naval Academy. These things were normal for me and normal for these characters. Today, such actions are politically charged national security issues.

Like attending a high school reunion, the perk and the curse of The Comeuppance is the chance to process memories. That’s a major difference between Jacobs-Jenkins previous plays like Octoroon and Gloria (which I would heartily encourage anyone to run, not walk, to). Both of those shows transition from sharp, situational comedy into broadly applicable social commentary (on racism and mass shootings, respectively). The Comeuppance, by contrast, confronts an onslaught of societal woes, from teen pregnancy and Blue Lives Matter to PTSD, studded with moments of comic relief. And the premise—that Death’s carriage is always lurking in the shadows—certainly casts a pall over the onstage proceedings. 

The acting, it should be said, is stellar across the board—even when a strobe light flashes, freezing everyone on stage except the character whose turn it is to voice Death. 

“Memory, if you don’t know, is sort of like a myth,” Bellow says, delivering Death’s final monologue. “The present is the best part of all things. Trust me. … that’s why I like to watch.”  

Jacobs-Jenkins’ final revelation for the audience is a bit of a cop-out, but what Death says is correct: The present, as in watching this play, is immensely likable. It’s thinking about the past and worrying about eternity that hurts.

Presented by Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and the Wilma Theater, The Comeuppance, written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and directed by Morgan Green, runs through Oct. 6 at Woolly Mammoth. Fall Arts Guide Rating: 4 out of 5 stars. woollymammoth.net. $56–$83.