Review by Carol Rocamora…
Conjure up the memory of the most traumatic gathering in your family’s history – then put it on steroids and turn up the volume ten times. Et voila! – you have the first act of Purpose, Branden Jacob Jensen’s explosive new melodrama now playing at the Helen Hayes Theater on Broadway.
So why is it that, when I look back on the performance I saw recently, I’m still laughing?
That’s the power of Jacobs-Jenkins’s writing – to expose the truth and at the same time to entertain mightily. He did it in Appropriate, his play featured on Broadway last year – and he’s done it again here, in this Steppenwolf Theatre Company production of his newest play.
The setting is familiar – even ordinary, you might say. A family of five and a guest gather in the parents’ Midwestern home for a dinner in celebration of the matriarch. But there’s nothing ordinary about this family – or its circumstances. Its patriarch, the Honorable Reverend Solomon Jasper (played by Harry Lennix) was a celebrity leader in the Civil Rights movement of the seventies and eighties. Indeed, his heritage goes back to four generations of pastors. As a child, he met Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, and rose to a leadership position thereafter. (His photos hangs in public places alongside great American Black leaders like Frederick Douglas, Harriet Tubman and Jesse Jackson). His wife, Claudine (Latanya Richardson Jackson), is a lawyer; his son, Solomon Jr. (Glenn Davis), was a state senator; his younger son Nazareth (Jon Michael Hill), attended divinity school.
“Buckle up”! Nazareth, the play’s narrator warns us, as they all sit down to the dinner that will result in a bloodbath. As it turns out, Solomon (called “Junior”) has just served 24 months in prison for having embezzled campaign funds for his senate seat (that’s why they are celebrating Claudine’s birthday three weeks late). “He just got out, she’s about to go in,” explains Nazareth about Junior’s wife, Morgan (Alana Arenas), also at the dinner. She was recently convicted of tax evasion and will also have to serve prison time.
The dinner explodes when Solomon Sr. expresses outrage over Junior’s obviously disingenuous scheme to restore his reputation by publishing his mother’s letters while he was in prison. “It’s time for truth now!” Solomon’s cry provokes an outpouring of accusations and revelations. Junior is suffering a breakdown; Nazareth (considered “the weird son”) admits he’s “asexual”; Morgan threatens to expose the truth about all of them; Claudine strikes Morgan in response. “I have let you build this house on a foundation of deceit!” cries Solomon, attacking his wife. To top it all, Aziza (Kara Young), Nazareth’s “friend’ and reluctant guest at this traumatic dinner, reveals that a) she’s gay and b) Nazareth has donated his sperm for her to carry a baby.
In Act II, the raging storm outside echoes the storm within. While the house submerges into troubled sleep, more secrets are revealed in the living room (designed by Todd Rosenthal). Junior tells Nazareth that he’s found dozens of pills that Morgan has smuggled into the house in her luggage (is she threatening suicide, or intending to poison one of them?). Moreover, Junior reveals his parents’ scheme for Aziza to sign an NDA re: the sperm donorship (it turns out that Claudine, “the ideal matriarch,” has been using her legal skills to control the family all along). And here comes the big revelation: Solomon’s feet of clay, hinted in act I, are now exposed. He’s sired more than one illegitimate child – how many he’s uncertain. (There’s even a sinister implication that Solomon has been asking son Junior to make these children “disappear.”)
I won’t spoil the surprise of the play’s climax (it does involve beekeeping gear and a gun – again, the combination of the hilarious and the harrowing that is Jacobs-Jenkins’s signature). Suffice it to say, this is a play that will keep you captivated till its tumultuous (and moving) conclusion.
“Why do men name their sons after themselves”, Nazareth, the narrator, asks us. The sins of the father being visited upon the sons is the great theme of this play. It reminds me of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night – that powerful American classic where the sins of James Tyrone have defined the lives of his two sons Jamie and Edmund.
But there’s another theme, expressed in the play’s title, that is ultimately as important to the playwright. In the final scene, Solomon Sr. and Nazareth try to pick up the pieces of their shattered family. After the revelations of his sins, Solomon realizes that, more than his faith and his identity, he has lost his purpose. That gives Nazareth the moment to offer the play’s second message: that perhaps there is no one purpose in life, but that every chosen way has its own purpose.
The soul of this play lies in the character of Nazareth, the playwright’s porte-parole. He’s a deeply compelling character – a young man who left divinity school and found divinity in the natural world instead, which he photographs with wonder and love. Enacted with great sensitivity by Jon Michael Hill, his lengthy, eloquent narration throughout these tumultuous twenty-four hours is funny, engaging, deeply moving, and filled with truthfulness, as he seeks to understand – not only his family – but also himself.
Directed by Phylicia Rashid, performed by a fine ensemble, this powerful new work will join the ranks of the great American family plays – those past and those to come. The roles are richly crafted, providing future actors with a great opportunity to inhabit them. And the commentary on American values and the legacy we are giving (or not giving) our children is deeply thought-provoking. Playwright Brendan Jacobs has indeed found his “purpose.”
Purpose, by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, directed by Phylicia Rashad, a Steppenwolf Production in association with Second Stage Theater, now playing at the Helen Hayes Theater through July 6.
Photos by Marc J. Franklin