HERE’S A BROADWAY SUCCESS
THAT ALSO BRIMS WITH PURPOSE
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ doesn’t just expose the cracks in a so-called perfect life—he shines a floodlight on them. Except for a few sequences, Purpose, his triumphant new work which opened March 17, is not earth-shattering—yet it’s extremely consequential. Here’s a writer who can create a topical play while making it wholly universal. Think Death of a Salesman. Except the family onstage at The Hayes Theater is hardly lower-middle-class and they sure aren’t white.
Jon Michael Hill
Jon Michael Hill, Kara Young, and Harry Lennix
The Jaspers are a rich, Black family whose paterfamilias is a proud man, a sermonist who had marched with Martin Luther King, with a wife who has made it her career to watch over and guide her brood with manipulative skill. Their oldest son, married with two kids, has become a state senator, and their younger son, our narrator, is a nature photographer. Sounds like a life full of purpose and success, right? While the two are no doubt symbiotic, we will discover that a life of prosperity and influence can be thwarted when purpose takes a back seat to the image of success. And when the shit hits the fan in the pursuit of that image, ending in family disgrace, there’s not enough money in the world to take care of it. (Although a non-disclosure agreement won’t hurt.)
Glenn Davis and LaTanya Richardson Jackson
Harry Lennix
At the center of this emotional rollercoaster which sparkles with unpredictability (similar to Jacobs-Jenkins’ Appropriate) is Harry Lennix as Solomon Jasper, a not-so-moral man whose moral authority has been his currency for decades. But when the whispers of scandal grow louder, his carefully curated legacy teeters. Opposite him, LaTanya Richardson Jackson’s Claudine presides over the household with the poise of a woman who has spent her life managing—controlling—every variable. Her love is suffocating, her authority absolute, and Jackson plays her with a force so subtle, so unwavering, you don’t realize just how much of the family’s fate rests in her hands until it’s too late.
The Full Company
Alana Arenas and Kara Young
Their children? They’ve each inherited their own form of quiet suffering. Glenn Davis’s Junior, the senator just released from prison for campaign-fund fraud, is a man in constant battle—with his family, with his public image, and most of all, with himself. Alana Arenas is stunning as his wife Morgan, who fights against being dismissed, underestimated, trapped in the shadow of the men in her family—she is headed to prison for filing false tax documents. Jon Michael Hill dexterously handles long monologues stepping in and out of the daylong action as our narrator Naz, who has reluctantly come home for his mother’s birthday dinner. While his camera captures truth, he struggles to face it in his own home. His detachment is a defense mechanism—one that shatters spectacularly when the weight of expectation, disappointment, and betrayal finally bears down. The luminous and electrifying Kara Young is Aziza Houston, an unexpected guest whose presence upsets the balance of power in the house, especially during the best dysfunctional dinner on stage since August: Osage County (2007), which was also born out of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company. When Naz tells us to “buckle up” for this gastronomical coup de théâtre, it’s an advisement to heed.
LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Jon Michael Hill, Glenn Davis, and Alana Arenas
Jon Michael Hill and Harry Lennix
Todd Rosenthal has built a home that’s practically a character itself—a pristine, multi-level Chicago mansion, decorated with the trappings of wealth and history. But the beauty of it is how, by the play’s climax, it feels more like a cage than a sanctuary. As she did with A Raisin in the Sun, Phylicia Rashad directs with a steady, unshowy hand, allowing the performances to simmer rather than explode. And that restraint is what makes Purpose hit so hard. The three-hour run-time flies by, largely due to Jacobs-Jenkins’ incomparable use of mischievous, profound, and provocative language. While so many modern dramas are about issues, Purpose is about family. Whether or not you see your own reflected in the Jaspers—you’ll feel the ache of recognition all the same.
Alana Arenas and Jon Michael Hill
Kara Young
photos by Marc J. Franklin, 2025
Purpose
Steppenwolf Theatre Company
The Hayes Theater, 240 W 44th St
on sale through July 6, 2025
for tickets, visit Purpose on Broadway
