Even before winning the Tony Award last year for his pointed dramedy Appropriate, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins had emerged as one of the brightest lights in the current American theater scene with works like An Octoroon, Gloria, and The Comeuppance. He cements his status in the modern pantheon with Purpose, now playing at Broadway’s Hayes Theatre after an acclaimed run at Chicago’s Steppenwolf. The Windy City was an appropriate launching pad for this show, which is set in the Midwestern metropolis and is loosely based on the Chicago-based family of civil rights legend Jesse Jackson.
Harry Lennix plays an 80-year-old civil rights icon named Solomon Jasper, a stiff-backed minister with a political bent who seems bitterly disappointed in his dashed hopes for extending his legacy and influence to a second generation. His eldest, who shares his name and is known as Junior (Glenn Davis), is a former Illinois state senator who was caught embezzling campaign funds and sent to prison (much like Jesse Jackson Jr.); his youngest, Nazareth a.k.a. “Naz” (Jon Michael Hill, wonderfully approachable as well as occasionally prickly), is a divinity school dropout who now makes a nominal living as a wildlife photographer and who prefers the isolation of the outdoors to glad-handing strangers or shepherding a clergical flock. (There doesn’t seem to be a clear antecedent for Naz among Jackson’s five children with his of 60-plus years, Jacqueline.)
The family gathers in the nicely appointed Jasper home (designed by Todd Rosenthal and lit by Amith Chandrashaker) for a dual celebration of the birthday of clan matriarch Claudine (an imperiously commanding LaTanya Richardson Jackson) as well as Junior’s release from prison, an occasion that’s dampered by the fact that his estranged wife, Morgan (Alana Arenas, wearing a mask of resentment), will soon be locked up herself for charges of signing false tax returns that she feels she was strong-armed into doing. (She managed to postpone her imprisonment to raise the couple’s two kids, whom she’s pointedly left back home with her parents.) Naz, who arrives with his lesbian pal Aziza (Kara Young, an ebullient delight), narrates the action like a Black Gen Z version of Tom Wingfield from A Glass Menagerie, setting up scenes and offering insta-commentary to underscore his perspective as an outsider in the home where he grew up.
Purpose falls neatly into the category of fraught family-reunion plays, complete with a tea-spilling, truth-dropping family dinner scene at the end of the first act that’s every bit as explosive as the one from Tracy Letts’s August: Osage County. But it also layers in contours specific to a boujee Black family that’s struggling to maintain appearances amid some inconvenient, discrediting facts. In this regard, the presence of Aziza — an awed outsider who’s eager to snap selfies with Solomon in front of the foyer portrait of his one-time colleague Martin Luther King Jr. — underscores the esteem in which the Jasper family is held. And how much they have to lose should there be any (more) chinks in the public image.
Richardson Jackson is a revelation, emerging as a formidable protector of her husband’s reputation even if it comes at the expense of her offspring or others close to her. (Give the woman a Tony Award, please.) She’s a woman who’s accustomed to getting her way in matters big and small, a point she demonstrates in swooping up Aziza’s coat and bag to forcibly encourage her to stay for dinner. In a telling detail that departs from Jacqueline Jackson, we learn that Claudine has a law degree which she uses not to advance civil rights causes but to issue NDAs and other means of protecting her husband’s reputation and legacy. (There’s a suggestion of past indiscretions and at least one love child, another echo of Jesse Jackson’s real-life biography.) Lennix’s Solomon, meanwhile, appears as a lion in winter, enjoying his semi-retirement as an amateur beekeeper though he’s poised to lash out at a younger generation that has fallen far short of his expectations.
Director Phylicia Rashad stages the domestic unrest with a wonderful sense of pacing, striking a careful balance between the eruptions of comedy as well as the more somber revelations. Jacobs-Jenkins struggles a bit with the narratively bumpy second act as he seeks to rehabilitate characters (Solomon Sr. in particular) whose savagery he has so ruthlessly exposed.
While Junior is described as the “king of the pivot” for his survivalist impulse to spin even the most self-incriminating misfortune, Jacobs-Jenkins is the true master here — shifting seamlessly between the hilarious and the heartfelt, and exposing his characters’ many flaws while allowing us to maintain empathy and (dare I say) affection for them. Sacred cows have seldom been grilled so thoroughly, or so deliciously. He also manages to end the show with a nicely calibrated scene of rapprochement between Solomon and Naz, a serious attempt on the part of the elder to bridge the generational gap of mutual misunderstanding. It’s a moment that may not fully restore our respect and admiration for Solomon but does suggest the possibility of something that seems elusive even to men of deep faith: grace. ★★★★★
PURPOSE
Hayes Theater, Broadway
Running time: 2 hours, 50 minutes (with 1 intermission)
Tickets on sale through July 6 for $69 to $299
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