Purpose

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Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Purpose is the magnificent new American play we have all been waiting for, funny, sad, insightful and ultimately important. Although it follows in the footsteps of earlier dysfunctional family plays by O’Neill, Miller, Williams, Odets, Hellman and Inge, it contains a new wrinkle. While most of those plays tended to be either psychological or moral dramas, this new play about a prominent Black family staged brilliantly by actress Phylicia Rashad in her Broadway directing debut, deals with such powerhouse themes as family relationships, the compromises of marriage, the hardship of being the son or daughter of a famous person, the sins of the fathers, living up to one’s own legacy, parent-child dynamics, living the little hypocrisies we are all guilty of, staying true to one’s self, the question of faith, and the problem of living differently in mainstream society.

If this seems like too much territory for one story, Jacobs-Jenkins, who won the Tony Award for Appropriate last year for a similarly dense play about latent racism, has a knack for dovetailing his plot devices so that all the pieces fit like a Rubik cube. The superb cast is led by LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Harry Lennix, the very versatile Kara Young (last year’s Tony Award winner), and Glenn Davis, the co-artistic director of Steppenwolf whose production this is. In fact, the play, a commission by Steppenwolf, was written with three of its younger actors in mind, Davis, Alana Arenas and Jon Michael Hill, all members of the company who are repeating their Chicago roles on Broadway.

The play, the story of the ficitional Jasper family, famous for their Civil Rights activities begun alongside of Martin Luther King, appears to be inspired by the true life fall from grace of the family of the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Like in the play, his son and namesake has gone to prison for misusing campaign funds as a state senator, and his wife has been indicted for falsifying tax returns. As they have young children, they had been allowed by the court  to serve their terms back to back so that their children will have at least one parent home.

The play begins on the day of a celebration for Solomon “Junior” Jasper, Jr.’s homecoming and matriarch Claudine’s two week’s postponed birthday party, waiting to gather her whole family. The story is narrated by Junior’s young brother who goes by the name of Naz but was named Nazareth in the hopes he would follow his father, the 80-year-old Rev. Solomon, into the ministry. Not only has Naz given up the ministry, having not been able to find his faith in organized religion, but he has come out as both autistic and asexual, a nature photographer who prefers to be out in the woods filming alone. Naz who addresses the audience directly may just be the finest use of a narrator in an American play since the Stage Manager in Wilder’s Our Town or Tom Wingfield in Williams’ The Glass Menagerie telling us enough of the backstory to intrigue us and enough of a warning to prepare us for the fireworks that occur when the family is all togeher.

Naz has agreed to come home for the party but needs his friend Aziza, a former neighbor from New York, to drive him to Chicago to be there on time. What the family does not known is that Aziza, a lesbian, may be pregnant with Naz’s child, but Naz knows they would not understand on many levels. When Aziza who supposedly has left for New York rings the doorbell to return Naz’s charger that he left in her car, the play really begins. His mother is so thrilled to meet his “girlfriend” that she immediately invites her to dinner. And Aziza is so impressed to find that Naz is from a famous family she grew up admiring that she is immediately smitten with the Jaspers and agrees to spend the night. Her hero worship knows no limits as she learns more and more about what Naz has never revealed to her.

However, it is at dinner when all hell breaks loose. Junior has created a book of his mother’s letters sent to him in prison that he hopes to turn into a best seller and reinvent his career. His father, humiliated by his son’s conviction, will have none of it, and Junior’s practically estranged wife Morgan visiting without their children calls them all hucksters and storms out the room hoping for a divorce from the man who has gotten her disbarred. And when Aziza accidentally announces her delicate condition, the stage is set for a tremendous blowout and family reckoning. This includes a rifle, a nondisclosure agreement and the death of a hive of bees, don’t ask. The hilarity of the first act segues beautifully into the high drama of the second as though it were prepared as the prologue.

The play might not work with lesser actors who might turn this into melodrama. As mother Claudine, Richardson Jackson holds the iron claw in the velvet glove, letting us find out that it has really been she running the family all along, while her husband was all over the country doing his civil rights work and creating messes she has had to deactivate in order to keep the family reputation intact. As the patriarch, the Rev. Solomon Jasper, Lennix is taciturn, judgmental but very fair. One of the best scenes is his quiet moment in the second act with Naz, his younger son, when they have a talk about what Naz has wanted from life that the father never understood.

As the older son who can’t keep out of trouble, Davis is both charming and hilarious, never able to curb his appetites or his desires, nor does he ever think of anyone but himself, his wife included, as he gets into one crisis after another. Hall as the narrator/young son has a charm of his own as someone very wise who came to terms with his own needs many years ago. Arenas’ Morgan is fiery hot in anger at her husband and his family for getting her into the situation she finds herself and trying to keep Aziza from getting into the same bind. As the one outsider, the enormously talented Young as Naz’s former Harlem neighbor steals almost every scene she is in, adding just enough unintended fuel to set the house on fire. We eventually find out that she is a school social worker when she mistakenly sets to work on the Jaspers.

Todd Rosenthal’s impressively detailed set depicts the living room/dining room of the Jasper mansion as well as the second floor balcony. A clever touch is a huge portrait center stage of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., a family friend, which sets the tone of the family’s aspirations to follow. The attractive costumes for the evening and the following morning of the story are by Dede Ayite. The bright lighting by Amith Chandrashaker puts us in the mood for a comedy which the play is for part of its length. Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen’s sound design includes door bells, gun shots and a piano in the next room, all important elements in the plot. Fight director Michael Rossmy gets in some surprising moments of dramatic import.

The Steppenwolf Theatre Company production of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Purpose follows on the heels of their magnificently staged August: Osage County, but unlike that dysfunctional family drama, this play has a great deal to say as well as major themes. Like the title of the author’s Appropriate, Purpose has many meanings all used here at the same time. And never forget how much fun it is to have a private look in at the private lives of a rich and famous (but fictional) family when they are on their worst behavior. Do not be surprised if this play wins this year’s Tony Award followed by next year’s Pulitzer Prize. You can say you heard it here first. While the play is quite long, it is tremendously rewarding as great plays should be.

Purpose (through July 6, 2025)

The Steppenwolf Theatre Company Production

The Helen Hayes Theatre, 240 W. 44^th Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, visit http://www.purposeonbroadway.com

Running time: two hours and 55 minutes including one intermission