By Samuel L. Leiter
March 22, 2025. Family dramas are theatrical staples, especially the kind where relatives gather from far and wide for some unifying function, like a holiday, death, or birthday. Often, a contentious dinner forms a central scene, as in August: Osage County (2007) or this season’s Cult of Love. In Tony-winning Branden Jacobs-Jenkin’s Purpose, now at the Helen Hayes Theater, such a scene, at a belated birthday party, perfectly captures the dynamic of a disparate family group (catalyzed by an outsider’s presence) so worked up they barely have time to snatch a bite.
And there’s plenty to be worked up about in Purpose, originated (like August: Osage County), at Chicago’s great Steppenwolf Theater last year, and, as with the playwright’s Pulitzer Prize-winning last play, Appropriate (about a white family facing racist issues), worthy of another. In it, he takes two hours and 50 minutes to dissect the Jaspers, iconic elites in African American circles, not terribly unlike the Jesse Jackson family.
The Jackson avatar is the self-satisfied pater familias Solomon “Sonny” Jasper (Harry Lennix, commanding and resonant), a renowned politician, civil rights leader, and itinerant preacher. He and his magisterial—sometime lawyer—wife, Claudine (LaTanya Richardson Jackson, a force of nature), manage the family legacy, trying to keep their clay feet from crumbling as a landslide of secrets, lies, and bad choices threatens to engulf them.
Setting the tone for director Phylicia Rashad’s fiercely impressive production is Todd Rosenthal’s imposing set for the Jasper’s Chicago manse, a towering living room with an upstairs landing leading via a winding staircase to the spacious living room below. A dining area, with a large round table, sits up right before a big window through which snow continues to fall. Portraits of significant Black leaders—dominated by one of Martin Luther King, Jr.—share space with other artifacts of Black culture. Amith Chandrashaker creates the perfect lighting, and Dede Ayite the character-defining costumes.
Solomon’s younger son, Nazareth, dubbed Naz (Jon Michael Hall, outstanding), who narrates and explains the events, dropped out of divinity school to become a nature photographer. Although he identifies as “asexual,” he’s donated his sperm to Aziza Houston (Kara Young, spirited), a deed meant to remain their personal secret. Such news, fears Naz, would surely blast Solomon and Claudine’s moral standards to smithereens.
Aziza, a queer Harlem friend with a degree in social work and a strong interest in civil rights, has driven him here from Niagara Falls, and is heading back home. Persuaded to sleep over by the overpowering Claudine, who imagines a romantic relationship between the visitor and her son, she’s overwhelmed to discover that Naz’s parents are the Jaspers, whom she holds in the highest esteem. She soon, however, finds out not only more about them than she would have preferred to know.
Meanwhile, she meets Solomon’s energetic but unstable son, Junior (Glenn Davis, excellent), a state senator, just released from 30 months in prison (like Jesse Jackson, Jr.) for misusing campaign funds. His angry wife, Morgan (Alana Arenas, ferocious), is disturbed because, now that Junior’s been released, she has to serve a year herself for a related white-collar crime. Their children have been left by her at home, away from their grandparents’ influence.
As the evening wears on, the dysfunctional relationships among the Jaspers come into sharp focus in multiple subplots, introducing talk of sexuality, religiosity, incarceration, heritage, adultery, mental illness, beekeeping (!), and, as forcibly articulated by Solomon before the final curtain, the need for purpose in one’s life. It’s hard not to see hints of Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof peeping through, and even of Chekhov.
The first act plays swiftly and with great gobs of comedic panache mingled with dollops of serious concerns. Jacobs-Jenkins’s gift for rhetorical fireworks are on full display, especially when projected by the booming voice of the charismatic Solomon Jasper, whose voluble attacks on the pathetic Junior are painful to behold.
Act Two focuses less on the ensemble than one-on-one or two-on-one confrontations, with perhaps a tad too much time spent on monologues that practically become disquisitions and can sometimes sound more practiced than spontaneous. The tone is darker, which, ironically, serves to heighten the relatively fewer laugh lines, which receive eruptions when they come, because they contrast so sharply with their harsh surroundings. Wait, for example, for the house-rocking questions Solomon can’t resist asking Naz about his experience as a sperm donor.
The only thing that might have prevented Purpose from keeping my eyes and ears glued to the stage throughout its nearly three hours was the incredibly cramped conditions of my seat in Row N. I’ve never felt quite so compressed at the Hayes, so I wonder if some rows have even less elbow and knee room than others. (I’m forced to concur with the Chicago reviewer who called Purpose “a work of knee-buckling intensity.”) And, of course, such a long show in a theater with such a limited restroom creates an interminable bathroom line, which, for the first time ever, forced me to miss the opening of Act Two as I waited with others to be let back in.
Broadway is booming with new musicals this season, but new straight plays have been few and far between. And not much more is promised for April, when the season ends. As such, Purpose will be on every best play list. But even in a season with more competition, it would dominate. You won’t want to miss it; just leave your knees at home.
Purpose ****1/2
Helen Hayes Theater, 240 W. 44th Street, NYC
Running time: 2 hours and 50 minutes, including one 15 minute intermission. www.purposeonbroadway.com
Through July 6, 2025.
Photography: Marc J. Franklin
