In its Canadian premiere at Soulpepper, The Comeuppance never quite ignites

Open this photo in gallery:

• Title: The Comeuppance
• Written by: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
• Directed by: Frank Cox-O’Connell
• Performed by: Ghazal Azarbad, Mazin Elsadig, Carlos González-Vio, Nicole Power, Bahia Watson and Araya Mengesha
• Company: Soulpepper Theatre
• Venue: Michael Young Theatre
• City: Toronto
• Year: Runs until Nov. 23

At his best, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins writes plays you feel with your whole body. A master of social critique, his punchlines dare you not just to laugh, but to scream in chorus with other audience members. His characters are often plucked straight from reality – well-meaning but misguided yuppies plunged into ultimate cringe.

These are people you know, the American playwright, 40, seems to intone: these are your classmates, your co-workers, the family members you catch up with only under duress at Thanksgiving.

The Comeuppance is about what you’d expect from the Pulitzer-winning writer’s take on millennial malaise, the pandemic and the United States’ military-industrial complex. Set in suburban Maryland on the evening of a 20th-anniversary high-school reunion, the play is a marathon at more than two hours long with no intermission. In that time, five thirtysomethings are forced to come to terms with the lives they once dreamt of for themselves – and the opportunities they squandered on their way to making them come true.

Theatre Review: The Welkin is a starlit, topical tragedy about women’s rights

In Soulpepper’s care, The Comeuppance is often brilliant. Director Frank Cox-O’Connell’s cast is one of the strongest to grace a Soulpepper stage in recent years, and Jacobs-Jenkins’s script is nearly as incisive as the string of hits – scorchers such as Appropriate and Gloria – that led to the playwright’s frequent presence in Southwestern Ontario theatre.

But something’s missing. The Comeuppance, in its explorations of death, nostalgia and the fallibility of memory, ought to singe the very edges of the theatre in which it plays. The laughs should be bigger; the pain, too.

In Cox-O’Connell’s hands, The Comeuppance doesn’t quite reach its gargantuan potential. A quirk in Jacobs-Jenkins’s script is the personification of death – a neat trick that sees all five characters briefly take on a spooky alternative role – but at Soulpepper, the transitions between realms aren’t always especially clear. (Whether that’s a problem with makeup or Jason Hand’s lighting design is difficult to say; in the non-death sequences, Ming Wong’s costumes and Hand’s light plots are stylish and sleek.)

As well, the production chafes in the same way as other recent American imports that had splashy Canadian premieres, Broadway darlings such as The Inheritance and Slave Play. The work’s intrinsic Americanness – its commentary on the Iraq War, and its mid-Atlantic setting just south of the Mason-Dixon Line – is at times tough to square in the current political climate. You’d hope Cox-O’Connell might find subtle ways to comment on the divide between the work and its inevitably Canadian context, but that doesn’t happen here.

Theatre Review: Old Times at Soulpepper is a frustrating, chewy 70 minutes of theatre

Instead, the hyperspecific world of the play feels just a little off-kilter. For example, the characters spell out “JROTC” when they reminisce about their high-school years in the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. As someone who grew up in suburban Maryland, I can vouch that you’d be hard-pressed to find a local millennial who didn’t pronounce it “jay-rot-see.”

And those same characters, steeped as they are in their patriotism, don’t so much as flinch when an American flag spends a solid chunk of the play crumpled on the ground – a stretch, given the ways in which we so often see the friends align their emotional well-being with their sense of national pride.

What makes The Comeuppance worth seeing is the cast – a who’s who of Toronto screen and stage talent that more than once comes close to setting Soulpepper ablaze. Wandering soul Emilio is often unlikeable, even when he’s on the right side of an argument, and Mazin Elsadig (Degrassi: The Next Generation) masterfully captures both sides of that complicated coin. Bahia Watson (The Handmaid’s Tale, The Welkin) is similarly sublime in the thorny role of Kristina, ably conjuring the doctor’s despair – the thin line between energized and crazed that can be crossed with just one more sip of high-proof jungle juice.

Nicole Power, best known for her work on CBC’s Kim’s Convenience and Strays, is perhaps the production’s standout as Caitlin, the well-off stepmom whose older husband may or may not have participated in the Capitol riots on Jan. 6, 2021. Her grief, rage and heartache leap off the stage in equal amounts, even when Caitlin’s actions become increasingly tricky to defend.

Ghazal Azarbad, as newly blind homebody Ursula, and Carlos González-Vio, as traumatized veteran Francisco, continue the trend of excellence within Cox-O’Connell’s cast. Azarbad in particular succeeds at embodying Ursula’s hidden, tender layers.

There’s a lot to appreciate deeply in The Comeuppance, from its slate of generational performances to Shannon Lea Doyle’s attractive, regionally accurate bungalow set. I wish it had worked better for me – that Cox-O’Connell’s directorial choices hadn’t stifled, even in small ways, the play’s potential to ignite.

Then again, throughout the work’s lengthy run time, Jacobs-Jenkins makes quite a few points about the power of regrets to shape a lifetime. Perhaps it’s only appropriate to have left Soulpepper with a few of my own.