I think the (Helen) Hayes Theater should be renamed the (Bette) Davis, given how much family psychodrama transpires in that tinderbox. Between Riverside and Crazy and Cult of Love are previous tenants but it was playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins who really set it ablaze with the Tony-winning Appropriate last season. He’s back to ignite the embers with Purpose, which is a little August: Osage County, a bit of August Wilson, a pinch of Eugene O’Neill, a smattering of Tennessee Williams…and a whole lotta play.
Where to begin? There are just six characters in the piece but it’s complicated. Let’s start with our narrator, Naz Jasper (Jon Michael Hill). A nature lover and photographer Naz (short for “Nazareth”) has been off the grid, preferring solitude to engagement. He’s broken his fast with civilization, however, for his queer friend Aziza (Kara Young), and as the play opens we hear about the “turkey baster” insemination they’ve completed. That could be the basis of one whole drama but at least two more will intersect, as Naz reluctantly returns to his family home. There we find Solomon (“Junior”) Jasper, who has finished a two-year stretch for white collar crime; soon to go to the big house for her role in the felonies is his estranged wife, Morgan (Alana Arenas), sparing their two (unseen) kids the pain of a complete separation. Both sons are patronized, smothered, and tough-loved by their parents, Solomon (“Sonny”) Jasper (Harry Lennix), a Civil Rights leader who has entered the tracksuit stage of life, and Claudine (LaTanya Richardson Jackson), who rules the roost with a velvet glove. It’s snowing when Naz arrives, and everyone prepares uneasily for dinner–including Aziza, who has retrieved his charger for him and agrees to stay the night.
After dissecting a white family in Appropriate Jacobs-Jenkins has prepared a full meal of slights, grievances, and bad behavior for us with the upstandingly black Jaspers. Naz, whose sexuality is forever questioned, comes out as asexual, and maybe he’s on the autism spectrum, too? Junior is dying, but perhaps that was Morgan (and perhaps it’s all just the constant anxiety that’s eating away at everyone)? We do know that Morgan has brought a huge bag of pills with her, intent unknown. Is suicide in the offing? There’s also a potentially damning memoir that Junior has written, exposing Sonny’s infidelities and possible love children. (He’s closed the door on a lot of this and prefers the company of the bees he’s raising.) Aziza, who’s initially starry-eyed at spending time with one of her 20th century civil rights heroes, is disturbed to find that he has feet of clay, particularly when he stomps on her for her 21st century wokeness and unorthodox child-bearing. (COVID and George Floyd are also hashed out.) Hovering over all is Claudine, who occasionally disappears her guests to an offstage office, where she makes them sign NDAs about all they’ve witnessed. Harsh.
Not for nothing did this production originate at Chicago’s incendiary Steppenwolf, with Hill, Lennix, Davis, and Arenas retained. The subject, as it is with its forbears, is the confrontation of an illustrious past (Jesse Jackson’s, perhaps?) that looks rather tattered in the present, and how to move on from its faded glories and constant wounds. (The battle scars from the movement cast long shadows.) Under Phylicia Rashad’s mostly assured direction everyone gets their shout on, and while certain things (like the title, whose meaning is unveiled late in the two-act, three-hour show) are overelaborated there are few dull moments and quite a few funny and surprising ones. But it feels more constructed than Appropriate, whose shocks flowed more organically, and the show fumbles the big dinner scene with blocking that obstructs too much of the action. (Why a circular table, positioned where it is? Could the stage have been raked? Frustrating.) And while I mostly agree that there are no small roles, only small actors, Aziza is too small a role for the Tony-winning Young, who gets just one pivotal monologue all her own.
Still, I praise the abundance of Purpose, and marvel at the seeming lack of effort with which Hill tosses off line after line after line. All the actors are terrific, but he has to anchor the piece and find its heart, as the other castmembers draw blood. (While young for his role Lennix uses his impressive voice to locate Sonny’s age and rage, as he and a sweetly steely Jackson land one blow after another on themselves and everyone else.) Likewise Todd Rosenthal’s set elements, dominated by Sonny’s portrait and other mementos of African-American life, Dede Ayite’s costumes, and Amith Chandrashaker’s lighting all play their part to fully define Purpose.
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