PURPOSE La Jolla Playhouse
* DISCLAIMER: The writer of the following review is currently employed as an intern at La Jolla Playhouse, where this production of Purpose was produced. The opinions expressed in the piece are those of the author writing in a personal capacity and do not represent the views of La Jolla Playhouse.
Purpose is a miracle of theatre at work. There is an inherent power imbalance between an audience member and a work of theatre; the people who collaborated to create and stage this show have poured more energy and thought into the thing than the viewer possibly can. That imbalance is magnified when the work in question won the Pulitzer and the Tony for best play, as Purpose did, given that any constructive criticism one might levy stands next to the opinions of The People Who Choose The Best PlaysTM. Nevertheless, even an attendee entering with no knowledge whatsoever of the show’s accolades will understand that Purpose is something special.
Photo Credit: (L-R) Stephanie Berry, Andréa Acosto,Cornell Womack, and Matthew Elijah Webbin La Jolla Playhouse’s production of PURPOSE; photo by Rich Soublet II.
Set in the Chicago home of Solomon “Sonny” Jasper (Cornell Womack), fictional famed Civil Rights icon loosely based on a collection of leaders from the era and especially Jesse Jackson, Purpose indulges in the time-honored theatrical tradition of putting the screws to a family until all of their baggage and what that baggage shows about society is out in the open. In so doing, Purpose places itself in a lineage of family explosion plays that ask questions about the possibility of honest success in America and the damage that generations of a family can inflict on one another. One of the ways in which Purpose carves its own path is by interlacing its interrogation of familial trauma with thoughtful meditation on the parallels between parents and their children and people fighting for the same cause at different times. The show chews intently upon the successes and failures of the Civil Rights movement, and muses as to what the role of the still-living Civil Rights leader is in the modern fight for justice, and whether they can successfully work for progress alongside younger, more queer-inclusive members of the movement. To this Black Studies and Theatre Studies major, the show is irresistable, and anyone with even a cursory interest in either field will be utterly captivated.
At the center of the narrative is the Jasper family, with the strain on the links that connect its members forming the basis of the plot. We are anchored in the story by Nazareth “Naz” Jasper (Matthew Elijah Webb), who is portrayed with immense groundedness and vulnerability, and whose narration helps to guide us into and through the tumultuous family dynamics at play, though which can at times be heavy-handed. Nazareth’s father, Solomon Jasper, is the source from which the family’s strain flows, namely from his disapproval of his sons’ paths in life and general absence from their adolescences on account of his globe-trotting journey promoting the causes he marched for. Nazareth dropped out of divinity school a semester before he was due to graduate and his brother, Solomon “Junior” Jasper (Sean Boyce Johnson) is a politician who was caught embezzling campaign funds, landing him a 30-month prison sentence, though his father’s connections allowed him access to a more cushy prison than most incarcerated Black men would endure. For Solomon Sr.’s part, his fame and involvement in the global movement for Black justice meant leaving his wife, Claudine Jasper (Stephanie Berry) to care for their two neurodiverse (though such labels were not around at the time) children.
The contrast of the new generation finding and defining themselves in the nomenclature of a modern era with greater queer visibility and medical understanding with the old generation still operating in the outdated and often reductive terms of their youth allows for both a captivating analysis of the modern Black family unit and a magnificent linkage of that unit to the difficulty of uniting different generations of fighters for equality. To this quarrelsome quartet, Aziza Houston (Andréa Agosto) and Morgan Jasper (Crystal Dickinson) add a complicating and contrarian flavor. Aziza is a friend of Nazareth’s who marvels at his family’s (or really, his father’s) reputation and has asked Nazareth to contribute his sperm so that she can artificially inseminate herself. Her performance is more low-key than the bluster and bravado of the extremely theatrical Jasper family, but she is nevertheless a very believable and compelling portrayal of a woman becoming slowly disillusioned with a hero and with a friend. Morgan, on the other hand, has become totally folded into the family’s drama and contributes several of the most delicious incensed monologues that we the audience revel in when watching a show of this nature. She is Junior’s wife and holds him and his family responsible for her prospective stint in prison for filing false tax returns. Her bitterness serves as a catalyst to induce the other members of the family to verbal and physical blows, and Dickinson’s performance makes you love to see it.
The final member of the cast, Claudine Jasper, cannot go without remark. She was a standout role, and consistently had the audience laughing when the show chose to be funny, which it did not infrequently—the show is hilarious. However, even otherwise straightforward lines were met with uproarious laughter when in the hands (or tongue?) of Stephanie Berry, who took the character and ran with it until she flew.
An exemplary element of the show is the scenic design by Lawrence E. Moten III. The stage is a bold and defiant blue, an excellent choice for a headstrong family whose bread and butter is agitating for progress. The architecture is beautiful and conveys the poise and history of the family extremely well, creating an excellent frame in which the intensity of the family and its awestruck guest can be unleashed.
Another praiseworthy facet of the show is its willingness to have an asexual protagonist and not feel the need to excessively hold its audience’s hand when explaining the nature of asexuality. A weaker show would have labored extensively to communicate the basics of the identity, whereas this one trusts its audience to more or less catch on and restrains mostly from redundant explanations.
If the show falters anywhere, it is in its length. The show struggles to come out swinging after the lull of the intermission and the opening of the second act suffers as a result. Once the tension mounts again, the show is able to draw the audience back in, but the reintroduction to the world of the play feels overlong and can strain the audience’s patience.
Nevertheless, the show is on the whole a miraculous endeavor, and the celerity with which my audience assumed a standing ovation is a testament to the fact that this is an extremely good show, well-worth seeing if you are in the area. In this instance, the Tony voters and Pulitzer committee selected an apt and spectacular piece of theatre. Purpose is playing through June 7th at the La Jolla Playhouse in La Jolla, California.
