Review: Your Purpose is to Go See Purpose
Photos: Marc J. Franklin
By Brian Scott Lipton
Just as all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way, so are their houses, as proven by the ones for many recent shows at Second Stage’s Hayes Theater, from the semi-shabby Southern “plantation” populated by the sniping characters of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ “Appropriate” to the festive, old-fashioned Connecticut domicile of the off-kilter family in Leslye Headland’s “Cult of Love.”
Now, we get to enter Todd Rosenthal’s stately, polished Chicago-area mini-mansion in Jacobs-Jenkins’ newest work, the extraordinarily written and exquisitely acted “Purpose,” precisely directed by the great Phylicia Rashad (having arrived, semi-intact, from Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre, where it ran last spring). But, as we all know, looks can be deceiving.
Admittedly, we might initially believe that this house’s owners – the Rev. Solomon Jasper, a one-time civil rights icon (played with great stateliness by Harry Lennix) and his loyal wife, the no-nonsense, occasionally passive-aggressive lawyer Claudine (an understated yet powerful LaTanya Richardson Jackson) – truly believe cleanliness is next to godliness.
But rest assured, there are plenty of dirty secrets here to be exposed during Claudine’s belated birthday gathering, which also doubles as a homecoming for her recently jailed eldest son “Junior” (Glenn Davis, balancing decades of hurt, the endless need to please, and possible mental illness with great expertise).
What happens in these rooms over 24 hours – at times reminiscent of both “Appropriate” and “August: Osage County” -- is often surprising, yet seemingly inevitable. It’s all related here as a memory play by the Jaspers’ youngest son, Nazareth (a remarkable Jon Michael Hill), a self-proclaimed asexual introvert who spends most of his time photographing remote wilderness areas, but who has just had an overnight “visit” with his old neighbor Aziza (the always amazing Kara Young, exhibiting equal measures of guilelessness and street-smarts).
A lesbian who has chosen to get pregnant by Naz, courtesy of a Williams-Sonoma turkey baster, Aziza unwisely admits her possible pregnancy after being “trapped” overnight in the Jasper home by a sudden storm outside and the not-so-gentle persuasion of Claudine. As it happens, though, her revelation is just one of the many firestorms that upset the weekend’s very delicate balance.
The biggest storm that hovers over the occasion, however, is the one between Junior, a formerly rising politician who has just served 20 months in prison for committing white-collar crimes, and his deeply unhappy wife Morgan (a stunning Alana Arenas) -- a coiled snake ready to bite at any moment – and about to serve her own prison term.
Jacobs-Jenkins is a fantastic storyteller, and it is possible to walk away from “Purpose” without considering any of the play’s further implications, simply having relished in his almost unparalleled gifts for dialogue and characterization. (It won’t be a surprise if he ends up with back-to-back Tony Awards.)
But I believe that Jacobs-Jenkins has a point to make; the women here – like so many other Black women -- have found their “purpose” in life: to be caretakers and caregivers, no matter what indignities they have suffered from the respective men in their lives or what careers need to be sacrificed.
The men, less shockingly, are truly lost souls – despite their accomplishments -- and ultimately beyond salvation by churches or revolutions. No longer an in-demand public speaker, the aging Solomon has taken up beekeeping, perhaps a late-in-life effort to do some sort of parenting, a task at which he has clearly failed. Junior latches on to some half-baked scheme to be an advocate for prison reform, but the idea comes more from his damaged head than his heart. And Naz, perhaps the most grounded of the Jasper men, nonetheless eventually wonders if he has let an important opportunity slip through his fingers.
One thing is sure: Theatergoers shouldn’t let this opportunity pass them by. Indeed, you have one purpose right now -- to grab a ticket to this must-see play while you can!