THE POLITICAL IS PERSONAL

Purpose is an exciting and morally complex
opening to the Huntington’s 2026-2027 season

MarHadoo Effeh, Ugo Chukwu, Ezra Knight, Phyllis Yvonne Stickney, Kalyne Ashley Coleman, Omari K. Chancellor

Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins‘ Purpose is an intriguing family drama that gives us a narrator with unconventional sexuality and social needs in the context of a prominent and deeply troubled family of origin.

Omari K. Chancellor shines as Nazareth Jasper, even in the context of this top-notch cast. Thoughtful and sensitive, his unconventional choices are a source of frustration to his parents, and especially to his father, Solomon Jasper (a commanding and a little scary Ezra Knight) an icon of the civil rights movement who feels let down by both of his sons.

Omari K. Chancellor

Nazareth has rejected the role as a religious leader his father planned for him to pursue a largely solitary career as a landscape photographer, though his photographs have a spiritual dimension. Nazareth’s older brother Solomon Junior (Ugo Chukwu), fresh out of prison, tried to follow in his father’s footsteps as a political figure, until he ran afoul of campaign finance laws.

Solomon Senior has reached a point in his life when he is ready to step back from his life of activism and leadership to devote himself to beekeeping. What he can’t step back from, however, is his disappointment in his sons. It all comes to a head when the family gathers in set designer Se Hyun Oh‘s elegant Chicago home of the Jaspers, where Solomon’s wife Claudine (Phyllis Yvonne Stickney) holds the family together with her matriarchal presence, despite the barely contained rage of Junior’s wife Morgan (MarHadoo Effeh), about to serve her own prison term.

Ugo Chukwu and Omari K. Chancellor

Claudine and Solomon are thrilled when Nazareth shows up for the family gathering with his friend Aziza (Kalyne Ashley Coleman), but the relationship between Aziza and Nazareth is not at all what they assume, and the relationship between these two will change dramatically in the course of the play.

Nazareth breaks the theatrical fourth wall again and again to address the audience and reflect on his own life choices and relationship to his family, giving the performance an intimate immediacy that transcends the suspense of wondering how the complex relationships are going to resolve themselves. The scene between Nazareth and his father, in which Solomon finally begins to recognize that his way of seeing the world is not the only way, is especially affecting in the way it captures the complications of love—love between a parent and child, love of justice, and love of one’s self and one’s own way of seeing the world.

Omari K. Chancellor and Kalyne Ashley Coleman

Director Josiah Davis meets the challenge of Purpose and its ambitious melding of theatrical technique and complex storyline, drawing us in and leaving us moved and inspired, even as we attempt to sort out the meaning of the choices made by this unique yet universally resonant family.

Ezra Knight and Omari K. Chancellor

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photos by Marc J Franklin

Oedipus El Rey
Huntington Theatre Company
The Huntington at Calderwood Pavilion
Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont St.
ends on October 11, 2026
for tickets, call 617.266.0800 or visit Huntington

for more shows, visit Theatre in Boston

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BIO: Lynne Weiss is a member of the Boston Theater Critics Association. Her reviews, travel tales, and progressively optimistic opinions are on her substack.