Beginning Nov. 19, the Philadelphia-based theater company The Wilma Theater (265 South Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107), recipient of the 2024 Tony Award for Best Regional Theatre, begins its 2024-25 season with the regional premiere presentation of the critically acclaimed play The Comeuppance by Obie Award-winning playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. Presented as a co-production between the Wilma and Washington, DC-based Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, the electrifying comedy is a meditation on impermanence, nostalgia, and isolation.
Photo courtesy of Cameron Whitman
The Comeuppance is directed by Wilma Co-Artistic Director Morgan Green and features a cast of local and regional actors Jordan Bellow, Alana Raquel Bowers, and Wilma HotHouse Company Members Taysha Canales, Sarah Gliko, and Jaime Maseda. The play runs from Nov. 19 to Dec. 8, with 20 performances presented in the Wilma’s 300-seat theater. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is a Brooklyn-based playwright and producer whose acclaimed work has earned him two Obie Awards, a MacArthur Genius Award, the Windham-Campbell Prize for Drama, and the inaugural Tennessee Williams Award. The two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist premiered The Comeuppance at New York City’s Signature Theatre in May 2023, which garnered a New York Times Critic’s Pick and Lortel Award for Outstanding Play. The Wilma and Woolly Mammoth’s new co-production began its run in Washington, DC, on Sept. 8, receiving critical acclaim as a “superb new staging” (Washington Post) and “illuminating” (Broadway World). This marks the second time the play has been produced with a new director and cast since its premiere.
Set in 2023, Jacobs-Jenkins’ witty and moving dark comedy focuses on five friends who reunite 20 years after graduating from a high school in Prince George’s County, outside of Washington, D.C. Known as the “Multi-Ethnic Reject Group,” the group was once bonded by their outsider status and the traumas of their teenage years. Gathered on a porch ahead of their high school reunion, they reminisce about their younger selves over adult jungle juice and pot as they each reveal how their lives have unfolded since graduation. As the evening continues, they drink, fight, play a truth game, and lament the disappointments of their adult lives. Throughout the evening, they are haunted by a mysterious otherworldly figure that inhabits each character, forcing them to confront the possibility that their past actions may have sealed their present fates irrevocably.
Preview performances for The Comeuppance are from Tuesday, Nov. 19, to Thursday, Nov. 21. The production opens with an invite-only performance on Friday, Nov. 22, at 7 p.m. and runs through Sunday, Dec. 8. Single Digital Tickets will be available for sale toward the end of the show’s in-person run. Tickets start at $35 and can be purchased at www.wilmatheater.org or by calling the Wilma’s box office at 215-546-7824.