*****/***** (five out of five stars
Let’s cut to the chase: Purpose, the latest play to come from the brilliant mind of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Appropriate), is likely to not only win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama this year, but the Tony for Best New Play, along with at least one or more Tonys for outstanding performances. Now playing on Broadway at the Helen Hayes Theater through July 6, this problem play confronts not only its characters with complex moral and ethical circumstances, but challenges the audience with these issues as well.
Presented as a memory play, narrated by the affable Nazareth “Naz” Jasper (Jon Michael Hill), Purpose recounts a belated birthday party of the Jasper family matriarch, Claudine (LaTanya Richardson Jackson). Naz walks us through the steps and missteps that lead to the explosive and disappointing party. An unassuming nature photographer, Naz has joined his friend and former neighbor Aziza (Kara Young, Tony winner Purlie Victorious) in Niagara Falls to help her out with a favor: she wants him to be a no-strings-attached sperm donor so that she might have a child, and at that moment she is ovulating. When he misses his plane to Chicago for his mother’s party, she offers to drive him for the eight-hour journey, upon which she becomes an unintentional house guest.
Here’s where the problems come in. Aziza is beyond thrilled to have stumbled into the middle of Naz’s iconic African American family. Solomon Jasper Sr. (Harry Lennix), the family patriarch, is closely modeled on the Reverend Jesse Jackson, a known and admired activist who had been closely tied to Martin Luther King, Jr. among many, many others. Aziza is a civil rights movement fan girl, and her compassion and community pride is likely the catalyst for her decision to propagate, regardless of all impediments, so that she can continue the struggle via the next generation. And Naz’s family is thrilled by the arrival of this young woman, whom they mistakenly believe is Naz’s girlfriend, much to their relief: they had suspected he might be gay.
Naturally, the image of the glimmering, happy household exists on the surface, and the fantasy quickly dissipates.
There are a few moments in Purpose that almost appear implausible since they could reasonably be resolved with a candid discussion. But, in this top heavy family (Claudine is a no-nonsense woman with a law degree) where the children are talked at and not with, that’s not possible. So the tragic undergrowth, while otherwise avoidable, is made inevitable by the family’s damaged history.
Everything comes to a furious boil during the birthday dinner when it is made clear that Aziza is gay and not planning to raise her child with Naz; and Naz is not gay, but asexual. As far as I can tell, this may be the first time in history in a major play—certainly a Broadway play, at the very least—that a central character is asexual, a sexual preference that few understand, let alone believe exists. It does, of course, and its acknowledgement—despite it being unceremoniously included in the play—is a seminal moment in the history of American theater.
Purpose owes its brilliance not only to Jacobs-Jenkins’ beautifully crafted script, but a powerful cast. Jon Michael Hill’s Naz is instantly likeable, funny and compassionate. There’s very likely a Tony award waiting for him in June. Kara Young is magnificent as always; Harry Lennix’s Solomon, Sr. is subtly powerful, with a gentle interior masked by a curmudgeonly exterior; and Glenn Davis—as Naz’s recently-released-from-prison brother (for embezzlement) and disgraced State Senator, Solomon Jr.—gives a fine performance as an incredibly complex, yet egotistical man who cannot possibly follow in the footsteps of the great man whose name he carries. A fine, homey set (Todd Rosenthal) of an upper class suburban house adorned with portraits of great African Americans and carefully chosen art, deftly authenticates the story—in every dream home, there is indeed a nightmare.
The production’s only shortfall, and one that is unsettling, at best, is that its director is two-time Tony winner Phylicia Rashad. While the play’s central focus is the ongoing struggle for the civil and human rights of all people, Rashad has notoriously and publicly maintained her support for convicted rapist Bill Cosby, thereby undermining the rights and agency of the dozens of women whom he terrorized and dehumanized. Moving forward, perhaps the esteemed Steppenwolf Theatre Company, who produced this play along with most of Tracy Letts’ magnificent examinations of familial and societal dysfunction, should look inward.
Purpose. Through July 6 at the Helen Hayes Theater (240 West 44th Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues).
