The members of MERGE (the Multi-Ethnic Reject Group Experience) gather on a porch in Maryland to celebrate before attending their twenty-year high school reunion.  The porch belongs to Ursula (Brittany Bradford), an eye-patched diabetes patient who is mourning the death of her grandmother.  First to arrive is Emilio (Caleb Eberhardt), a successful artist living in Germany.  Next is Caitlin (Susannah Flood), a former “top of the class, every class” who stayed in town, married a Trump supporter, and had four miscarriages and no children.  Finally, there’s Kristina (Shannon Tyo), a military veteran and surgeon who has developed a drinking problem since the pandemic.  One member, Simon, is absent.  He’s a journalist and got a last-minute assignment on artificial intelligence.  “I’m so sorry I can’t be there,” he says over the phone, “but AI is about to get wild.”

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ The Comeuppance, then, is typical big chill stuff, with two exceptions: first, Kristina brings her cousin Paco (Bobby Moreno), an ex-boyfriend of Caitlin’s.  Emilio remembers Paco as abusive and drove Caitlin to Planned Parenthood more than once.  Paco keeps calling him “bro.”  Everyone else pretends not to remember.  Emilio is flabbergasted.  Second, Death is present, speaking through the characters and directly to the audience.  Death loves gossip and occasionally pops in to give us background information on their lives.  But Death is also preparing to take one of them.  Which one, of course, is withheld until the end.

Death is present in less literal ways as well.  MERGE’s generation is framed by Columbine, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Covid-19.  Ursula has lived alone since her grandmother died, right before lockdown.  Paco, another veteran, has post-traumatic seizures and was recently homeless.  Kristina is more traumatized by the emergency room than by the war.  At the end of their thirties, their bodies are beginning to deteriorate, their lives shaped by loss and disappointment.  Death reminds us that we lose our cell repair systems at twenty-seven: “From that point on, it’s my game.  Wrinkles.  A little sag.  A creaking in the joints.  A misplaced word or two or several.”  In other words, they’re facing the comeuppance.

This may give a false impression of the play.  It is quite funny, and most of its time is spent not in existential dread but in rehashing old memories, filling in the blanks on half-forgotten acquaintances, and evaluating who these people have become in the interim since high school.  Death, then, is ever-present but ambient, white noise.  For this reason, better than any post-pandemic work I know, The Comeuppance captures the mood of this moment.  Jacobs-Jenkins’ characters are faced with the twin deathliness of the past, which is over, and the future, which will end us all.  Both are abstract.  Likewise, the world is poised between the Covid deaths, mostly over, and a future pandemic, almost inevitable.  Jacobs-Jenkins has done a phenomenal job of representing the buzzing sound this makes in the ear.

The Comeuppance ran through July 9th at the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre.  480 W. 42nd Street  New York, NY.  2 hours 10 minutes.  No intermission. Photograph by Monique Carboni.