'Purpose' review — a fresh, stinging, and dazzling family drama
Read our review of Purpose on Broadway, directed by Phylicia Rashad and written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, a 2024 Tony Award winner for his play Appropriate.
“Buckle up,” a young man named Nazareth tells the audience while seated for a celebratory family meal in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Purpose. Heed his warning. On stage, dinnertime gatherings typically devolve into disaster, if not violence.
Yes, the play follows this well-worn convention. Yet between Jacobs-Jenkins’s distinct point of view and peerless use of language, this funny, deep, and provocative work feels totally fresh. (If they gave awards for stage slaps, it’d win hands-down.) It’s a bracing follow-up to his Tony Award-winning family portrait, Appropriate, from last season.
Inspired by the lives of Jesse Jackson and his nearest and dearest, Purpose is a daring dramatic vivisection of the fictional Jasper family. What’s exposed is the gaping divide between shiny public personas and shadowy private realities.
In Chicago, photographer Nazareth (Jon Michael Hill) reluctantly reunites with his father, Solomon (Harry Lennix), a pastor and Civil Rights icon; take-charge mother Claudine (LaTanya Richardson Jackson); brother, Solomon Jr. (Glenn Davis), a politician fresh out of prison for campaign-fund fraud; and disbarred sister-in-law Morgan (Alana Arenas), who’s headed to lockup for filing false tax documents.
Aziza (Kara Young), Naz’s friend from Harlem, is the outsider present for combustion’s sake. Stepping into the Jasper home — decorated with pictures of Martin Luther King and Solomon’s glory days on the rose-colored walls — Aziza is initially starstruck. After the family’s murky history and hypocrisies bubble up, not so much.
Director Phylicia Rashad has assembled an A-plus cast and lays on thunderous sound effects for gravity. To quibble, Naz works overtime to narrate the goings-on — mileage varies on that device — and his final speech, though beautiful, comes a bit out of the blue.
Still, Purpose buzzes with rich ideas about sons and fathers and the burdens of legacy, sexuality, and authenticity. Solomon Sr.’s passion for beekeeping cleverly drives home the point of the play’s title. Purpose dazzles and stings.
Purpose summary
Following its world-premiere run last year at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Purpose arrives at the Hayes Theater on Broadway with the rip-roaring saga of a fictional Black American family. Over the course of the show’s nearly 3 hours, the members’ secrets and lies are laid bare during a snowed-in gathering.
What to expect at Purpose
The family play is a theatre staple. It’s impossible not to feel the influence of other dramas about family dysfunction as the Jasper saga plays out in Purpose.
The meal that turns into a melee conjures Tracy Letts’s August: Osage County. Solomon Sr., who can deceive and deny with the best of them, distinctly echoes dishonesty-loathing Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof when he loudly rages about “Lies! Deceptions!” Naz, who steps in and out of the action as a narrator to lend context, mirrors Tom Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie, right down to the regretful tone of the play’s closing reflection.
A reliable sign that an ensemble is firing on all cylinders is when your favorite actor on stage is whoever is speaking at any giving moment. Shout-outs go to Hill, who has the heavy lift as our guide to family dysfunction but endlessly endears; Young, a marvel in her fourth Broadway show in as many years; and Arenas, who makes the absolute most of every word as the bitter Morgan.
What audiences are saying about Purpose
With a 92% rating on the audience review aggregator Show-Score at the time of publication, Purpose has been hitting the mark with theatregoers.
- “An explosive play by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. Terrific acting by all, featuring serious subject matter with some humor mixed in as well. Could be shortened just a bit, play ran 3 hours. Not to be missed.” - Show-Score user Phil 9070
- “Wonderful actors on a great set in a new style play, well-written and well-directed with a family story that never stops evolving. The tensions and laughable times every family experiences.” - Show-Score user Patrick M 4
- “Very similar emotional roller coaster as Appropriate, though subject is different.” - Show-Score user Sallie D 3322
Read more audience reviews of Purpose on Show-Score.
Who should see Purpose
- Theatregoers who’ve admired Jacobs-Jenkins earlier works, including Gloria and An Octoroon, won’t want to miss this family drama.
- Audiences who admire a well-oiled ensemble will want to see this superb cast in action.
- Fans of Phylicia Rashad’s work as an actress will want to see her Broadway debut as a director.
Learn more about Purpose on Broadway
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s new Broadway play blends sharp humor and weightiness into a rousing family drama.
Photo credit: Purpose on Broadway. (Photos by Marc J. Franklin)
Originally published on