For a Times Critic on Deadline, a Dramatic Reversal

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I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to do my job.

That’s usually not a problem. As the chief theater critic for The Times, I enjoy the ritual of seeing plays during previews, thinking about them for a day or two and writing opening-night reviews.

But after Second Stage Theater announced in June that it would produce a revival of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s “Appropriate,” I dithered for months about covering it. True, it would be the play’s Broadway debut — and the playwright’s. Both are important milestones for the paper to acknowledge with a thoughtful response.

On the other hand, I’d seen “Appropriate” before, when it premiered Off Broadway in 2014. Other critics welcomed it as a serious play by a serious playwright.

I hated it.

That surprised me. The play’s subject — the legacy of racism in America — is something I care about deeply. And the plot is clever: Three white siblings bicker over the horrible souvenirs of slavery they find in their father’s plantation home. But the tone seemed too hectic and self-consciously outrageous to suit the subject.