In a well-appointed living room in Illinois, a painting of Martin Luther King Jr watches over a gathering of a family that has consciously constructed much of its identity on his legacy. The dispersed members of the Jasper clan have come together ostensibly to celebrate the birthday of the family matriarch Claudine. No matter that her real birthday was three weeks ago. Claudine has nudged the date to accommodate her eldest son, who has just finished serving a sentence for embezzling campaign funds. What begins as a carefully orchestrated homecoming/belated birthday party quickly unweaves itself as the family acquires an unexpected guest and an itch to face some unpleasant facts about its past. Or pasts.
Originally commissioned for Chicago’s Steppenwolf’s storied ensemble and directed with verve by Phylicia Rashad, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Purpose builds like a gathering storm, crackling with static before unleashing a downpour of long-buried grievances. Solomon Jasper, the patriarch, is a revered figure in the civil rights movement, a man whose marches with MLK Jr and fiery speeches have made him a worldwide icon. In his retirement and nearing 80, he has taken up beekeeping, a hobby that serves as a greater source of solace than his own family. Harry Lennix imbues Solomon with a weary gravitas, his booming voice masking an undercurrent of insecurity. Solomon’s wife Claudine (LaTanya Richardson Jackson) maintains the family’s public image with the practised ease of a hostess arranging flowers for guests — polished, inviting, and carefully concealing the thorns. Glenn Davis plays Solomon “Junior” Jasper with a perfect mix of charisma and craven calculation; his ability to “take any lemon and make limoncello” has earned him the nickname “king of the pivot”. Yet even this erstwhile political supernova can’t pivot his way fast enough around his wife, Morgan (Alana Arenas), who is in a stormy mood: in a few days, it will be her turn to go prison for 12 months for committing tax fraud.
Much of what we learn about the Jasper family’s history is doled out by Nazareth, the Jaspers’ younger son. The self-proclaimed “great disappointment” has abandoned divinity school for photography, rejecting the expectations of his reverend father. He is also the play’s amiable narrator, pausing the action at hinge moments to provide capsule commentaries on what follows. It’s a testament to Jon Michael Hill’s skill that these asides never interrupt the flow of the play but add layers of meaning to the family’s complicated dance with inconvenient facts. Rounding out the cast is Aziza (a superb Kara Young), Nazareth’s platonic friend who ends up staying overnight at the Jaspers’ and becomes an unwitting vessel for and witness to the spilling of long-submerged family secrets. Jacobs-Jenkins delivers the revelations in his well-paced play with the precision of an acupuncturist inserting needles, each one expertly placed to realign the audience’s focus.
The dialled-to-11 intensity recalls Tracy Letts’ August: Osage County as well as Leslye Headland’s Cult of Love, another drama swirling around family secrets. An even closer analogue is Jacobs-Jenkins’ incendiary Appropriate, which revolved around the discovery of an album filled with unsettling images of lynchings.
Like that earlier play, Purpose explores not just what is handed down to succeeding generations but the narratives constructed to make that inheritance more palatable. Unhappy families may be unhappy in their own ways, but all family histories, the Jaspers’ included, are edited, rewritten and selectively archived. Purpose vibrantly captures not just the concentric concerns of one prominent Black family, but the paradox of intimacy: that the people who know us best are also best equipped to wound us. The result is an absorbing, fiercely intelligent drama that is as emotionally bruising as it is darkly funny.
★★★★★
To July 6, purposeonbroadway.com
