Cast of The Comeuppance, photo by Jon Sweeney
(PRINCETON, NJ) -- The Lewis Center for the Arts' Program in Theater and Music Theater at Princeton University presents The Comeuppance by Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning playwright and Princeton alumnus Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Class of 2006. Performances take place April 3-4 and April 10 at 8:00pm and April 11 at 2:00pm & 8:00pm at the Berlind Theatre at McCarter Theatre Center.
In this dramedy, a New York Times Critics' Pick, a self-defined group of outsider Millennials gather on eve of their 20th high school reunion as an undeniable element of the future viscerally looms before them. The production is directed by Princeton faculty member Vivia Font.
Taking place in the fall of 2022, this self-proclaimed "Multi-Ethnic Reject Group" reconnects on the porch of a house in their old neighborhood in Prince George's County, Maryland. Reminiscing about their high school years and recent pasts, including living through Covid-19, 9/11, and the Columbine High School shooting, and fueled by drinking and smoking pot, the friends discover competing, recollected versions of their teenage years. They find themselves facing a reckoning with the memories of who they were, and are, and that their past actions may have irrevocably sealed their present fates.
The play premiered Off-Broadway at Signature Theatre in New York City, running from May to July 2023. The Off-Broadway production was a critical success garnering such reviews as: "The Comeuppance is a rich and fully mature work... a haunting new play. It's a mystery of the fine writing that the humor does not squash but rather enhances the pathos surging underneath. When it erupts, it can be devastating," by The New York Times; and "The Comeuppance channels and condenses what's been floating in the ether and brings it all to earth. Here's a drama where Branden Jacobs-Jenkins both sums up and reconfigures the present moment," by New York Magazine.
Performances are April 3, 4 and 10 at 8 p.m. and April 11 at 2 and 8 p.m. at the Berlind Theatre at McCarter Theatre Center, 91 University Place. Tickets are $20 and $10 for students available through the McCarter Box Office. The Berlind Theatre is fully accessible with wheelchair and companion seating and an assistive listening system. The April 10 performance will be open captioned. Guests in need of other access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at [email protected] at least one week prior to the event date.
Jacobs-Jenkins, who serves as a member of the Lewis Center's advisory council, received the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in Drama and a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award for his play, Purpose. He also received the 2024 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play for Appropriate. His other plays include Girls, which had its first developmental performance at the Lewis Center in 2017, Everybody, War, Gloria, An Octoroon, and Neighbors.
The play was proposed for the Lewis Center's current theater season by senior Vera Fei, who also participated in the set design for the project with faculty member Yoshi Tanokura. The project was selected in part as an intensive acting opportunity for students in the Theater Program interested in further developing their acting skills. Fei is majoring in architecture and minoring in theater. She finds the play's setting of a porch an interesting environment in which to design, noting that this threshold, liminal space is symbolic of the play.
Font, who is directing the production, is a lecturer in theater and music theater at Princeton, a professional stage, film and television actor, and Princeton resident. Locally, she has appeared in McCarter Theatre's production of A Christmas Carol. She has also worked with The Public Theater, Classic Stage Company, PlayCo, Rattlestick Theater, Hartford Stage, The Old Globe, and Oregon Shakespeare Festival, among others. As a director, Font has worked on new and classical plays and collaborations and has produced events such as Among Trees at the Herrontown Woods in Princeton and her short film, HONK. She is a founding member of the Princeton Actors Collective and a member of The Actors Center.
The student cast includes students Radon Belarmino, Kavya Bhat, Vivian Bui, Donte Calabrese, Zach Lee, Willem Maniago, and Sophia Vernon.
In addition to Fei, student members of the production team include Myrah Charles and Eric Ding as co-stage managers and Danny Flaherty as assistant stage manager. Professionals on the production team, in addition to Font and Tonakura, include, Itohan Edoloyi as lighting designer, Miriam Patterson as costume designer, Jane Shaw as sound designer, and Jacqueline Holloway as intimacy/fight director. Faculty member Aaron Landsman is co-producer.
A pre-show conversation with the playwright and Professor of the Practice Lloyd Suh precedes the April 3 performance at 5:00pm in the Berlind Rehearsal Room at McCarter, which is free and open to the public.
Visit the Lewis Center website to learn more about this event, the Program in Theater and Music Theater, and the more than 100 public performances, exhibitions, readings, screenings, concerts, lectures, and special events presented by the Lewis Center each year, most of them free.
