(Photo credit to Johanna Austin.)
There are some shows out there that transcend everything. There’s no obvious genre, the acting is phenomenal, there are complicated things and simple things, and the show becomes something completely unbelievable. It’s more than watching a play, it’s watching a work of art. I would say that you don’t see a ton of shows like this, that have a little bit of everything and still blow your mind. For me, The Comeuppance was one of those shows. I didn’t have much of an idea of what I was walking into, but I walked out pretty sure I had just seen one of the best plays I’ve ever seen in my life.
Let’s be honest here…we live in a pretty wacky world. The past few years have been tricky for the best of us, between dealing with a crazy president, a year in quarantine because of Covid, and the general insanity of trying to navigate all of it. The Comeuppance is based in an affair that causes anxiety and uncertainty to begin with…high school reunions. Do we really want to see all those people from twenty years ago? Most of the time, definitely not. And yet, we still go back. Five, ten, fifteen, twenty…every so often it’s like a little reminder that people have both changed, and not changed at all.
The Comeuppance looks at a friend group staring down their twentieth high school reunion. The characters are each unique- some have stayed and some have left. They have their own histories after high school, and that’s very much changed who they are now and their relationship with each other. Some of them are holding onto the past. Some of them are looking into the future. And some of them are just trying to get by in the present. We are also joined by a more ethereal character- Death, who inhabits character’s bodies.
Death is both a character and a theme in The Comeuppance. We get to hear Death and his stories about humans, but there’s a lot more than that. For one, we see him move from character to character. We see how the characters embody him in different ways, but also sharing similar traits. Death puts things into perspective. He is coming for someone. But we’re also seeing other things dying, like this friend group that had once been so close. It’s all beautifully thematic.
There’s a lot of wonderful thematic material in The Comeuppance. It addresses so much that we can all relate to. We see material about Covid, and what people went through during quarantine. We see material about trauma, and how different people deal with different things. There is so much that we’ve lived through in so many ways, and The Comeuppance brought this all to the forefront in a very brave way. We’re all healing from a lot of these shared experiences like quarantine, and there are others who have lived through what other characters have. I think with it, they’re trying to heal us through art.
There are a few things that can bring people together. To name a few, weddings, reunions, and funerals. Obviously, in The Comeuppance we’re seeing a reunion, but there’s so much more in there. The last time the lead, Emilio, had seen his old friends, was at one of their weddings. A funeral is foreshadowed. But I think the most interesting part about this is that Emilio finally freaks out about not knowing his old friends. Of course, after twenty years and leading completely different lives, this is sort of inevitable…even though they still revisit some of their high school jokes. The back and forth is incredible. Everyone is leading different lives, but the group of them connected in a very special way, and some things just won’t change.
This is a great show about human nature. Throughout it, we see so many different sides to each character. Emilio is the one who got away, but he still clings tightly to what his friends had in high school. Ursula wants to live a normal life despite things changing so drastically, like losing sight in one eye. Katelyn has been dealing with trauma since high school. Kristina could quite possibly be becoming an alcoholic. And Paco is just trying to get by from day to day. These are just the basics with them, but each character is so multifaceted. I felt like I could relate to all of them in different ways, and I felt like I was observing human nature on a deep level.
So what did I really take away from this show? Well, as a kid that never quite fit in, I know how important it is to have people in your life who actually understood you…even if I’ve drifted away from my high school friends. I remember what that was like, so that was something that really hit home for me. I think about Emilio and his camera, always viewing the world through the lens of it until he just couldn’t anymore. I think about how Ursula kept her friend group together to the bitter end. I think about Katelyn, who doesn’t want to address what she went through in high school. Walking away from The Comeuppance, I felt like I had seen a show that spoke to me. My mom also felt that way. I think there was something for everyone to take away from this show.
Like I said, I felt like I had just watched a work of art. It was so beautiful in so many ways, and struck me deeply. The Comeuppance was more than just a play. It was an experience. It was poetry, a painting, a warm blanket. And it’s definitely a show that will stay with me for a long time.
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