There’s nothing more badass than an artist who follows up their most commercially successful hit by pulling an “and now for something completely different.” 

Which means Give Me Carmelita Tropicana! makes Branden Jacobs-Jenkins a fucking badass. 

Last season’s Appropriate vaulted his fame to new heights. And after newfound notoriety, more audiences than ever may be willing to check out what he wrote next. 

The answer: Give Me Carmelita Tropicana!, at the far-from-Broadway Soho Rep, a love letter not only to an endangered species of avant-garde theater, but also an adoring play designed to raise awareness regarding an underground performance artist of a bygone era.

Appropriate, this is radically not. 

Jenkins is becoming the Tony Kushner of his generation, and not solely because both put their erudition on front street. As much as The Kush is considered Mr. Angels in America, his oeuvre straddles as many wildly diverse registers and modes as BJJ.

Now imagine if Kushner wrote a play that never received a New York production.

Sacrilege, right?

Well, Jenkins’ Girls premiered at Yale Rep in 2019; are we really going to allow Covid to deprive the Theater Capitol of America from a modern Bacchae birthed by the holy trinity of BJJ, Lileana Blain-Cruz and Raja Feather Kelly?!

And while we’re here…

An Octoroon revival when?