Review: Purpose, An Explosive New Family Drama on Broadway

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s last play on Broadway, Appropriate, culminated in an extraordinary sequence depicting an Arkansas plantation house as it is reclaimed by nature over the course of years. A season later, his new play offers a similarly breathtaking view of a great house in decay. Originally produced at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company and now at Broadway’s Helen Hayes Theater, Purpose has arrived as Americans contemplate the dissolution of all things that once seemed permanent. Timely though it may be, it also seems destined to take its place among the greatest American dramas of all time.

Purpose is about the Jaspers, a prosperous Black family whose patriarch, Solomon Jasper (Harry Lennix), is an itinerant pastor and was a central figure in the Civil Rights Movement. His wife, Claudine (Latanya Richardson Jackson), abandoned her own law career to play the role of wife, hostess, and enforcer.

Their son, Solomon Junior (Glenn Davis), traded on the family name for a career in politics, which is now in tatters following a conviction for embezzlement that led to two years of incarceration. He has just been released, but his wife, Morgan (Alana Arenas), is about to go in for filing false tax returns in relation to her husband’s activities. She has pointedly declined to bring her two children to grandma and grandpa’s house, where they have gathered in the eye of the storm.

Our narrator, Naz (Jon Michael Hill), is what Claudine calls her “weird son.” He is an artist who photographs nature reclaiming places formerly occupied by people. Not only has he turned his back on the family business, but he identifies as asexual, something this devoutly Christian political dynasty finds difficult to accept. But when Naz’s friend Aziza (Kara Young) shows up unexpectedly, they rejoice at the prospect of him exiting this phase. How will they ever understand that not only is Aziza queer and Naz is merely her friendly sperm donor, that she intends to raise a child on her own with no more input from Naz than his DNA? As they take their places at the dinner table, Naz turns to the audience to advise, “Buckle up.”

Director Phylicia Rashad stages that edge-of-your seat scene around a circular table slightly upstage right with Naz and Junior’s backs to the audience. It could easily become deadly choice in the hands a less confident director, but Rashad proves that it’s not necessary to spoon-feed audiences every beat. They’ll lean in and pay attention if you get the pacing and performances right—and there are some remarkable ones here.

Richardson Jackson makes an immediate impression as the woman of the house, a mob boss in sensible flats (the perfectly selected contemporary costumes are by Dede Ayite). She’s practiced in the art of twisting arms over a plate of food, and we instantly understand her offer for Aziza to stay is one that cannot be refused. We also discern that her vice-like grip on worldly matters has allowed her husband to occupy the lofty perch from which he looks down on his progeny.

Lennix conveys the world-weary presence of a man who has lived long enough to be disillusioned by his great expectations, with Junior serving as the living embodiment of that disappointment. Boyish and trying way too hard, Davis’s Junior is like the untalented child of famous actors who compensates with consistently over-the-top performances. He’ll receive no ovation from his father, a brilliant man accustomed to being told as much.

We see that from the awe-struck Aziza, who attended a school in which Rev. Jasper’s photo was on the wall next to Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. As she has proven in Clyde’s and Purlie Victorious, Young is the undisputed champion of nervous charm. Her anxiety is relatable and even lovable as she finds herself suddenly among the Black aristocracy wondering if a little bit of their excellence might rub off on her future child.

“Beware,” Morgan warns her like a fortune-teller in a horror movie. Descending the stairs for dinner wearing shades and a don’t-fuck-with-me attitude, Morgan is a woman just barely holding it back, and Arenas does not disappoint when the dam bursts, leaving the audience breathless and red-faced from ingesting the spiciest monologue of the entire play.

Hill makes an attractive guide through Jasper land, speaking directly to the audience to offer context and quite a bit of reflection on his own shortcomings, although never in a way that spoils his own significant reveals.

Amith Chandrashaker precisely lights Naz’s soliloquys, stealthily yet clearly breaking us in and out of the main narrative. While a spotlight focuses on the actor in the darkened home, lights remain on a few key works of art in the Jasper home, including a portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr. and one of Rev. Jasper at the very top of the stairs. It’s a legacy that feel ever-present on Todd Rosenthal’s set, which reimagines a suburban McMansion as a kind of museum. By the end of the play, it’s difficult to tell if all this memorabilia is meant to impress visitors or the Jaspers themselves as they stray further from the path their father has envisioned for them.

Obsessed with the past and anxious about the future, the Jasper family is America, buckling under the weight of its own myth and trying to hold it all together with ever-increasing violence.

The ghosts of Anton Chekhov and Tennessee Williams haunt this play about inheritance and destruction. Jacobs-Jenkins is deeply aware of the tradition of family dramas of which he is now the heir apparent in this country, smartly exploiting the tried-and-true while adding his own distinctive flourishes. His craftsmanship and keen insight have resulted in a hugely satisfying addition to the form, which still has plenty of life left in it.