You may have trouble catching your breath from laughing so hard during the first act of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s sophomore Broadway outing, “Purpose,” which opened Monday at the Helen Hayes Theater. Deeply imagined and grave beneath its yucks, it unspools like a brilliant sitcom.
Then, also like a sitcom, it jumps the shark.
Ah well, mixed emotions go with the territory. If “Purpose” is primarily a merciless dissection of hypocrisy in an important religious-political Black American family — the Jesse Jackson dynasty comes to mind — it is also a grudging love letter to them in all their God-praising, backroom-dealing, self-promotional glory. The problem is that in the constant switchback of perspectives, the play, directed by Phylicia Rashad, grows too hectic and attenuated to maintain a line of conviction.
The same could be said of the family, the Jaspers. Chicago-based like the Jacksons — the play originated at the Steppenwolf Theater Company in that city — they, too, are headed by an oratorical pastor who, in his youth, worked closely with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Also familiar are several possible unauthorized offspring, hushed up but not quite silent. Jacobs-Jenkins cannot help noting that among that generation of Bible-quoting civil rights worthies are enough sins of the father to burden a host of sons.
Indeed, approaching 80 and withdrawn from the front lines, Solomon Jasper (Harry Lennix) now reserves most of his thunder for his family. His formidable wife, Claudine, a honeyed matriarch with a law degree, is tough enough to shape it to her own ends as needed. But on their disappointing sons falls the brunt of Solomon’s biblical disapproval.
The older son, named for his father, is the more obviously wayward. Raised to uphold Solomon’s political legacy, Junior (Glenn Davis) instead tarnished it when, as a state senator, he was convicted of embezzling campaign funds. These he spent, according to his embittered wife, Morgan, on “cashmere drawers and betting on racing pigeons.”
Morgan (Alana Arenas) has other reasons to be embittered. Forced by the family to sign false tax returns, she has been disbarred; now that her husband is out of prison, she’s on her way in. (Because they have two children, they were sentenced to serve consecutively.) The divorce she seeks is also on lockdown, as Claudine (LaTanya Richardson Jackson) intends to keep everyone together on the crowded family pedestal, however uncomfortably and by any means necessary.
The necessary means right now include a mandatory homecoming celebration dinner in honor of Junior’s release. The discomforts include not just his recent and possibly expedient diagnosis of bipolar disorder but also the return of the other prodigal, Nazareth.
Somewhat lovingly, Claudine calls Naz (Jon Michael Hill) her “weird son,” by which she mostly means he refuses to be known. Having left divinity school — he was meant to manage the spiritual part of his father’s portfolio — he has become a nature photographer, more at home outside than in.
Socially it’s the other way around: Naz may be autistic, and he says he’s asexual. Both of those identities the family vigorously denies, and his arrival for the homecoming with his live-wire friend Aziza (Kara Young) does not make either trait seem more credible.
Did I mention that Aziza may be pregnant with his child?
This is barely a taste of the setup for the play; one of its infelicities is that it requires so much back story to get started. Perhaps half of Naz’s dialogue is narration spoken directly to the audience, unnecessarily siphoning drama from the action. If Jacobs-Jenkins’s wit and Hill’s charm alleviate the problem somewhat, Rashad’s staging emphasizes it, as the lights (by Amith Chandrashaker) bump down awkwardly to indicate private speech, then back up afterward, freezing the momentum each time.
The actors reliably restore it, and in any case there is pleasure to be had in watching Jacobs-Jenkins assemble his kindling stick by stick before setting it aflame. This eventually happens around the dinner table — that catnip location for playwrights (because it forces everyone into prolonged proximity) but perennial headache for directors. Short of the old trick of leaving two chairs empty and scooching the others unnaturally to the sides, how do you make everyone visible?
Rashad and the set designer, Todd Rosenthal, haven’t solved that problem, and the sound design, by Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen, doesn’t make up with what we hear for what we are often unable to see. Among the production’s design elements, only Dede Ayite’s costumes are loud and clear with their stories.
No matter; even just 50 percent of material this rich is sufficient for big laughs. The way Claudine gets what she wants by legislating reality — watch her “convince” Aziza to stay for dinner by forcibly removing her coat and bag — is but a taste of the manipulations to come, among which her guilt trips are merely appetizers. For dessert: a nondisclosure agreement.
Nor are the others innocent bystanders. Junior, whom Naz calls the “king of the pivot” comes up with a scheme to revamp his reputation by monetizing family letters; Solomon blows him down like God. And when Morgan, who has mostly seethed wordlessly, finally erupts, calling the Jaspers “hucksters” and worse, a hefty slap in the face awaits her. By that point, even Dr. King, whose huge portrait centers the set, appears to smirk in his shrine.
This family, as Aziza realizes too late to escape, is off the rails. That’s exciting while the story remains in midair in Act 1, less so upon landing in a heap in Act 2. By then the dials set for bright comedy are stuck way too high for serious retribution; Solomon especially behaves so abominably that the playwright’s attempt to rehabilitate him cannot succeed.
Worse, everyone’s grievances are at least temporarily forgotten in the deliberate anticlimax of an ending; unlike the ruined Lafayette family in Jacobs-Jenkins’s coruscating “Appropriate,” which ran in the same theater last year, the Jaspers lick their wounds and step quietly back into their lives.
It is nevertheless a privilege to be granted an audience with them; the world wonders enough about the secret lives of its leaders that playwrights at least since the Greeks have sought answers in drama. “Purpose” confirms but also contextualizes one’s worst suspicions.
Yet I left the play wondering if that’s what Jacobs-Jenkins was really interested in. His most original and moving character here is Naz, the one who has renounced the legacy of leadership, the one who seeks self-definition, considers fatherhood (the playwright became a parent in 2021) and wanders the lakes of Ontario in search of the photographic sublime. Perhaps the “purpose” of the play’s title is not the kind that has a dream or bends toward justice, but simply the one a son must find on his own, in the shadow of the compromised greats.
Purpose
Through July 6 at the Helen Hayes Theater, Manhattan; 2st.com. Running time: 2 hours 50 minutes.
