‘Purpose’ Broadway Review: The Tonys Have a New Frontrunner for Best Play

Last year, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ “Appropriate” won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play. The playwright could very well win a Tony this year for Best Play. With “Purpose,” Jacobs-Jenkins delivers another harrowing comedy about a deeply troubled American family. After a world premiere last year at Chicago’s Steppenwolf theatre, “Purpose” opened Monday at the Helen Hayes Theater.

There are other reasons to see “Purpose” beyond its awards potential. For those of us too young to have seen Laurette Taylor in “The Glass Menagerie,” there is now the opportunity to see LaTanya Richardson Jackson in “Purpose.” Amanda Wingfield and Claudine Jasper don’t have a lot in common except for the fact that they are mothers at the center of a memory play about families in severe distress. With “Menagerie,” Tennessee Williams was clearly writing about his own mother and sister. With “Purpose,” Jacobs-Jenkins may or may not be drawing on his own personal history. He’s clearly taking more than a few plot points from somebody else’s family.

In 2013, Jesse Jackson Jr., a U.S. Representative from Illinois and son of the civil rights icon, was convicted of violating federal campaign laws; he served several months in a federal prison and cited his struggles with bipolar disorder and poor physical health as contributing factors to his crime. While incarcerated, Jackson Jr.’s mother, Jacqueline, wrote him letters, which she later compiled into a book titled “Loving You, Thinking of You, Don’t Forget to Pray.” Her best-seller aside, Jacqueline Lavinia Jackson has been described as “elusive, private and largely unknown to the public.”

Those words from the Los Angeles Times do not in any way describe the fictitious Claudine Jasper, who also wrote letters to her incarcerated son. As magnificently played by Richardson Jackson, written by Jacobs-Jenkins and directed by Phylicia Rashad, Claudine is a mother and wife who rules the roost, runs the show, snaps the whip. One could say the same for Amanda Wingfield, except for the fact that Williams’ mother character can never be played as the brightest bulb in a home that’s about to have its electricity turned off. Claudine, on the other hand, exudes enormous smarts and savvy. She’s also shrewd as hell.

And there’s something else about this character that fascinates. We never quite get a grip on Claudine. How are we supposed to perceive her – villain, hero, tragic figure, total monster?

Through the course of this three-hour play, she is all these people plus a few more, and Richardson Jackson achieves these many mercurial changes by simply adjusting the temperature of her voice. Hers is a masterful performance.

Harry Lennix plays Claudine’s husband, the philandering civil rights icon Solomon Jasper, who, in his retirement, has taken up beekeeping. Jacobs-Jenkins’ title muses wonderfully on the focused “purpose” of bees. The word is much more ill-defined for humans, a fact that holds tragic significance for the Jasper family. Richardson Jackson is the brain to Lennix’s hammer, which is used to harmful effect  against the bipolar and once-incarcerated son, Junior, played by Glenn Davis. Jacobs-Jenkins gives these two male characters a series of show-downs that, along with Claudine’s various machinations, are the show’s recurring highlights. The frightening spontaneity of these explosions throws into shocking relief the sly deliberateness of Claudine’s actions, and once again, it’s here that the writing finds itself in perfect sync with the performances under Rashad’s exquisitely measured direction.

Winding their way through all the family feuding is Junior’s estranged wife (Alana Arenas) and a visiting friend (Kara Young) of the Jaspers’ younger son, Nazareth (Jon Michael Hill). Playing the two outsiders, Arenas and Young often recede with great distinction into the background only to dazzle theatrically when Jacobs-Jenkins gives them the floor. Each ultimately chooses to reject the Jasper family, but in totally different ways. While Arenas is fierce in her denunciation, Young provides the play’s most poignant moment when she walks away.

Which brings us to the character that only briefly leaves the stage. Nazareth Jasper is the Tom Wingfield of “Purpose.” In small part, Laurette Taylor dominated “The Glass Menagerie” because, beyond giving a great performance, Eddie Dowling reportedly delivered a very weak one as Tom. In recent years, the character’s homosexuality has been emphasized, making the role something more than just a narrator.

Certainly, Nazareth is much more defined, especially with regard to his sexuality – or lack thereof. At times, however, his narration goes on and on. At the top of the play, he even apologizes for his long-windedness. Hill’s performance never quite makes sense of “Naz” being the theater’s most loquacious recluse. One long speech in Act 2 details the character’s learning disabilities as a child. It delivers crucial information that might have played better in real time as a memory debate between Naz and his parents.

Then again, maybe Jacobs-Jenkins is up to something with this contradiction between the narrator’s speech and his aloneness. Near the end of “Purpose,” the prickly Solomon asks his son an off-the-wall but pointed question. In fact, it may be the major question you were asking or, more important, should have been asking back in the first act about the character of this play’s narrator.

The circumstances of Solomon’s great question and Naz’s flaky response (in my opinion) won’t be revealed here. It’s just one of many reasons why I need, and want, to see “Purpose” again.

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