By Ron Fassler . . .
Before getting to the question of how a sixty-two-year-old comedy like Ossie Davis’s Purlie Victorious can remain current in its social concerns without changing a line of dialogue, while still popping up fresh as a daisy, please allow for a short digression. Her name is Kara Young.
Ms. Young burst on the Broadway scene with her 2021 debut in Lynn Nottage’s Clyde’s, playing a tough-as-nails former convict who is busting her ass trying to make it in a world where the odds are stacked against her. In 2022, she took her character of a passionate caregiver in Martyna Majok’s Cost of Living to exceptional heights. Now in 2023, she’s Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins, a young woman of indeterminate intellect but possessed of a sensible heart and infinite soul. A hilarious, courageous characterization, Ms. Young has the audience in her warm embrace within minutes of stepping on stage. She goes for broke with a voice pitched somewhere between here and the moon and a completely cockeyed physicality. Recipient of a Tony Awards nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play twice in the past two years she will undoubtedly receive a third for this performance in the spring. This season has a long way to go but a win is in the cards for this combination 1-2-3 punch, as deserving as it is probable.
The rest of this new production, which opened last night at the Music Box Theatre and stars Tony Award winner Leslie Odom Jr. (Hamilton), is just about as winning. It’s the first time a major venue has produced Purlie Victorious in over six decades, though there’s a reason for that: any play with the subtitle A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch has the potential for evoking images of Br’er Rabbit and Uncle Remus. However, under the assured guidance of director Kenny Leon, the entire cast steps lightly, and boldly, at the same time: a magical feat. The show is beautifully paced, exquisitely designed (Derek McLane), costumed (Emilio Sosa) and lit (Adam Honoré); what’s more, it pays honor to legendary actor/writer/activist Ossie Davis with love and respect.
Davis wrote the title role, Purlie, for himself and starred in the 1961 Purlie Victorious alongside his wife, Ruby Dee, as Lutiebelle. Godfrey Cambridge, Tony-nominated, was Purlie’s brother-in-law, Gitlow; and Alan Alda, in his second Broadway appearance, was the plantation owner Cap’n Cotchipee’s liberal-minded son. (Alda is listed in the Playbill in this new production as a producer.) The original cast was rounded out by Sorrell Booke (TV’s “Dukes of Hazzard”), Beah Richards (Idella) and Helen Martin (Missy); though when it was musicalized as Purlie in 1970, Ms. Martin was cast as Idella. That musical was a seminal experience for me as a teenage theatergoer, rich in the performances of Cleavon Little (Blazing Saddles) and Melba Moore, who both rode the wave to Tony Awards.
Purlie’s story is a simple one. It’s the 1950s, though the program states its setting and time as “The Cotton Plantation Country of the Old South. The Recent Past.” Purlie’s a preacher with no flock or church, so in order to remedy that he returns to the ramshackle home where he grew up—a fictitious town in Georgia, He’s devised a scheme by which he can con some money out of the old skinflint who owns the plantation on which his homestead rests. Cap’n Cotchipee (Jay O. Sanders) is a standard racist of the old school (very old school), a man with a thin ego and a dim view of humanity. He once beat Purlie with his omnipresent bullwhip, and a taste of revenge in swindling the old man doesn’t bother Purlie’s conscience one bit. He’s brought Lutiebellie with him from Alabama, a young woman he’s met who bears enough of a resemblance to a recently deceased Aunt. If he can pass her off as the Auntie to the Cap’n (even though Auntie is dead), he can collect a $500 inheritance and start his new church in an old barn on the soon-to-be-demolished property.
That may sound silly, and it is. But the stakes are high, the comedy is low, and the actors practically float on the merriment. Leslie Odom Jr. is charm personified, with a sense of purpose, drive, and ambition shining as bright as a spotlight. And playing opposite Kara Young, their connection is palpable, building slowly and determinedly to its sparkling and inevitable bonding. In the tricky role of Gitlow, Billy Eugene Jones knows exactly what he’s doing, and Kenny Leon must be credited for never allowing the comedy to descend into anything offensive—just the opposite. Jones is a delight.
What a pleasure to have Vanessa Bell Calloway back on Broadway after forty years. As Idella, she lends a veteran’s touch to every one of her lines. Heather Alicia Simms’s Missy Judson, Purlie’s sister-in-law and Gitlow’s wife, makes a very real woman out of a character that could be done solely for easy laughs. She’s irresistible. Noah Robbins, so dynamic as Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird a few seasons back, plays the well-intentioned young Charlie with a silly voice and a pure heart. And Bill Timoney and Noah Pyzik land effectively in the minor roles of a Sheriff and his Deputy.
The most difficult challenge is left to Jay O. Sanders as Cap’n Cotchipee, who brings the full force of his always commanding stage presence front and center. Ol’ Cap’n demands to be seen and heard whenever he steps into a room and Sanders makes sure that’s the case. One of the most reliable of New York actors, his nearly fifty-year career finds him in what is sure to be a hit, smack dab on 45th Street, right where he belongs.
When asked to define what satire is, George S. Kaufman once remarked “It’s what closes on Saturday night.” Not this Purlie Victorious. Not by a country mile.
Purlie Victorious. Open run at the Music Box Theatre (239 West 45th Street, between Broadway and Eighth Avenues). www.purlievictorious.com
Photos (except where indicated): Mark J. Franklin
Cover Photo Caption: Jay O. Sanders, Billy Eugene Jones, Kara Young, and Leslie Odom, Jr.
