From the moment we sit down at the intimate Hayes Theater, it’s clear that we’re in for a family drama, an emotional reckoning that will no doubt contrast with the perfect décor: a richly appointed coral-colored great room, dominated by a curving staircase up to the second floor. Upstage right is a picture window through which we will see the snowstorm that will lock all the characters in place for 24 hours.
The portraits of Martin Luther King and other Black icons hanging from the walls and the tastefully chosen African art scattered throughout ground us in a home of Black wealth and power. And most obviously, a dining table downstage right promises to give us that staple of the grand family play: an explosive confrontation over dinner that will end the first act with a bang.
This is the Chicago home of the Jasper family: aging civil rights icon Solomon Jasper and his lawyer wife Claudine. They are celebrating both Claudine’s birthday and the release from prison of son Junior, a politician convicted of embezzling campaign funds. Younger son Naz has come back for the celebration. Junior’s angry wife Morgan is also there—when she is not sulking in her room. And Aziza, a friend of Naz’s, shows up unexpectedly to stir the family soup.
Naz is our likeable guide to his complicated family. Having made himself something of an outsider—he dropped out of divinity school and became a nature photographer—he is well-equipped to provide us with backstory, sketch shorthand descriptions of family members, and confidently predict the explosions that will come at the dinner table.
But surely any of us could have predicted those explosions—and that points to a larger problem with Purpose. Charming as I found Naz’s company, I felt a bit too guided through the play. Each time Naz addresses the audience, the lights dim and the action pauses. The pauses aren’t fatal to the play—Jacobs-Jenkins’ writing is sharp enough to keep us engaged—but they slow the momentum and I sometimes felt the playwright didn’t trust us to make the necessary connections ourselves.
The weight of the speechifying increases in Act II, culminating in a long monologue by Solomon that addresses the play’s title. His newfound passion for beekeeping—played for laughs in Act I (his entrance in full protective regalia, smoker in hand, is a highlight) becomes a metaphor for communal survival and purpose.
This speech leads to a reckoning between Solomon and his younger son. Naz, whose outsider status has been built up throughout the play (he considers himself asexual, may be on the autism spectrum, and has consciously rejected the religious path mapped out by his father), pushes back against his father’s vision of a predetermined purpose. He insists that purpose must be found individually, not imposed. Yes, of course. But would the irascible Solomon be as readily convinced as he seems to be here?
And then there are the echoes of so many other plays. There’s nothing wrong with drawing from a rich theatrical tradition, but at times the play feels overshadowed by other family dramas it recalls: the volcanic dinner of August: Osage County, the birthday meltdown in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Solomon even bellows for “TRUTH”—with about as much sincerity as Big Daddy), even the comically inept suicide attempt from A Little Night Music.
Purpose is genuinely funny, especially in Act I, and shows off Jacobs-Jenkins’s gifts as a writer. It also raises difficult and important questions around family legacies, parental expectations and disappointments, and, of course, purpose. But the play never quite pulls all this into a coherent whole. It all felt to me a bit overstuffed and undercooked.
Leave a Reply