The Comeuppance (Steppenwolf Theatre)

About This Event

A Pulitzer and Tony-winning playwright's Chicago premiere — Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' dark comedy, directed by Steppenwolf ensemble member Tina Landau and co-produced with San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater. Steppenwolf tickets typically run $42–75, well under what a comparable Broadway-adjacent run downtown would cost.

Jacobs-Jenkins won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award for Best Play for 'Purpose,' after two earlier plays ('Appropriate' and 'Gloria') made him a Pulitzer finalist without the win — he's also a MacArthur 'genius' fellow and a Guggenheim fellow. 'The Comeuppance' follows five old friends from a self-declared 'Multi-Ethnic Reject Group' pregaming their 20th high school reunion in a D.C. suburb — drinks, a limo, and a lot of unfiltered catching-up, with Death written in as a literal, recurring presence that interrupts the small talk to say the quiet part out loud.

Worth knowing: this Chicago run comes first, before the play heads to San Francisco for its West Coast premiere at ACT; the original Off-Broadway production was a New York Times Critics' Pick, and its cast won the Obie for Outstanding Ensemble. No single showtime to add to a calendar here since performances run nightly through March 21, 2027 — check steppenwolf.org for the schedule.