{"id":38067,"date":"2026-09-16T09:21:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T16:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/?p=38067"},"modified":"2026-09-26T19:45:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T02:45:13","slug":"purpose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/2026\/09\/purpose\/","title":{"rendered":"Purpose"},"content":{"rendered":"

Play (2024)
\nby Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
\nDirected by Josiah Davis
\nHuntington Theatre Company<\/a>
\nBoston Center for the Arts
\nSouth End, Boston
\nSeptember 10 – October 11, 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

Scenic Designer: Se Hyun Oh; Lighting Designer: Marika Kent; Sound Designer and Composer: Kathy Ruvuna; Costume Designer: Celeste Jennings; Production Stage Manager: Ashley Pitchford; Stage Manager: Ross Gray<\/strong><\/p>\n

With Phyllis Yvonne Stickney (Claudine Jasper); Ezra Knight (Solomon Jasper); Ugo Chukwu (Solomon “Junior” Jasper); MarHadoo Effeh (Morgan Jasper); Omari K. Chancellor (Nazareth Jasper); Kalyne Ashley Coleman (Aziza Houston)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Ugo<\/a>
Ugo Chukwu as Junior
Omari K. Chancellor as Naz
in “Purpose”
Photo: Marc Franklin
Courtesy of Huntington Theatre Company<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
A play told from the perspective of a young man from a dysfunctional family in which his pastor father was a noted black activist in the Civil Rights movement.<\/div>\n

Nazareth, aka Naz<\/em> (Omari K. Chancellor) narrates the recent story of a family get-together in his native Chicago. His father, Solomon (Ezra Knight), a famous civil rights movement personage, who, as a young man, was known for his associations with the great leaders of the movement, holds forth at a family dinner, along with his strong-willed wife, Claudine (Phyllis Yvonne Stickney). Present are Naz, his older brother, Junior (Ugo Chukwu), Junior’s wife (Morgan Jasper), and Aziza (Kalyne Ashley Coleman), a close woman friend of Naz’s. <\/p>\n

Junior has not long ago been released from prison where he served several years on fraud and corruption charges, and things are none too peaceful with his wife. Aziza has enlisted Naz to offer his sperm to get pregnant, and, somewhere along the line during the dinner, she tells Naz’s family about this. They are quite surprised, and Naz’s parents, seemingly always on the lookout for bad press and personal manipulations of one sort or another, are right on the case to get Aziza to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Solomon has received a lot of notice for his presumed sexual dalliances and he and his wife Claudine are very aware of how his, and their reputation, have been affected. <\/p>\n

\"Omari<\/a>
Omari K. Chancellor as Naz
in “Purpose”
Photo: Marc Franklin
Courtesy of Huntington Theatre Company<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This very long play (over three hours) does not economize on the length of its monologues, of which there are many, nor on the variety of themes which crowd its space. The protagonist, Naz, is affecting enough, goes to great pains to dutifully recount his responses to this family disaster and does so with some degree of wryness and humor. But there’s an oddly comedic quality to this narrative, not quite in keeping with its more troublesome content. Clearly, it’s intended as a dark comedy, but, though engendering quite a bit of uproarious laughter from the attendees at the opening, I did not actually laugh once.<\/p>\n

\"Omari<\/a>
Omari K. Chancellor as Naz
Kalyne Ashley Coleman as Aziza
in “Purpose”
Photo: Marc Franklin
Courtesy of Huntington Theatre Company<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I was most taken by a few moments in the play. It is heartrending when Junior recounts his time in jail and talks about the injustices of those serving life sentences for violations which are no longer crimes. When Aziza talks to the family quite openly about her sexual identity and lifestyle, it is heartfelt and forthright, though the response from the family seems more out of the 1950s than the 2020s. <\/p>\n

When, near the very end, after all the various fuses have blown, Solomon hears Naz talk about his actual confusions and articles of faith, and impressed by the quality of his his son’s forthright revelations, asks why he did leave divinity school; Solomon expresses honest appreciation of his younger son’s heartfelt revelations and it’s a very sweet moment.<\/p>\n

\"Ezra<\/a>
Ezra Knight as Solomon
Omari K. Chancellor as Naz
in “Purpose”
Photo: Marc Franklin
Courtesy of Huntington Theatre Company<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Indeed, these moments make for good islands of significance in a play which has a diffuse narrative, unfocused drama, and feels emotionally all over the place. The ups and downs of the characters are frequently unexpected, their outbursts seemingly out of place. Many of the characters seem unscrewed and impulsive throughout, though Junior and Aziza seem to avoid this. Even Naz, who is the narrator-protagonist, has an outburst with Aziza which seems extreme and unwarranted. Certainly, Solomon and his wife Christine are portrayed as manipulative and unsympathetic characters, save for the last moments when Solomon has the above-mentioned tender moment with Naz.<\/p>\n

\"MarHadoo<\/a>
MarHadoo Effeh as Morgan
Ugo Chukwu as Junior
, Ezra Knight as Solomon
Phyllis Yvonne Stickney as Claudine
Omari K. Chancellor as Naz
Kalyne Ashley Coleman as Aziza
in “Purpose”
Photo: Marc Franklin
Courtesy of Huntington Theatre Company<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There is so much going on in this play that is thrown together willy-nilly that any one of the subjects could be the sole subject of a full-length play – a failed political personage like Solomon and his wife Christine, the supportive but manipulative partner, who are ardently defensive of his fragile reputation; the questions related to sexual identity and sexual motivation brought out by Naz and Aziza; the question of a charismatic leader’s hypersexual philandering; and the question of legal errancy in Junior’s following of his parents’ manipulativeness. Any of these themes raised but not dealt with very thoroughly in this play might have been good individual foci for this story. Instead, these multiple themes are merged in what is presented as a kind of supposed-to-be-funny melee with a dramatically complex quality in the background. Even actual or purported suicide attempts are cast into the brew as a kind of hilarious supplement, but not really funny at all.<\/p>\n

It surprises me that this play, which seems like an early draft that needs to be significantly whittled down and shaped, won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2025. Perhaps those judges saw a particularly well directed version that hid some of the significant frailties in the script.<\/p>\n

The acting throughout is adequate, but I sense a directorial hand which has not brought out nuances, if there are any, in the script. Gestures of acting are dramatic but overdone, generally true throughout.<\/p>\n

The set by Se Hyun Oh is beautifully diverse, multi-tiered, and dramatic, and lighting by Marika Ken accentuates it well.<\/p>\n

For some unclear reason, artificial smoke is pumped onstage throughout the duration of the show. Is this supposed to remind us that we are watching something recounted by Naz? The smoke emerges more vividly at the end, and neither that nor the smoke generated throughout really appears to signify anything.<\/p>\n

As an historical note: Naz, who recounts this in the years since the pandemic, refers to Solomon as approaching eighty. That would mean that his father was likely born in the mid to later 1940s, which would make him a very young man of twenty-ish during the height of the most active part of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. That seems inconsistent with the pronouncement of Solomon’s fame from that era.<\/p>\n

There are some widely recognized resonances of the play’s narrative with that of Civil Rights icon Jesse Jackson and his family, but it would be far too big a jump to assume that this play tells that story directly. Indeed, Jesse Jackson Jr., son of Jesse Jackson, was jailed for two and a half years for misappropriating campaign funds, a similarity with the narrative of the play. Though there were allegations of inappropriate sexual behavior against Jesse Jackson, the implications are that the sexual dalliances of Solomon, the main character in the play, are far more extensive. These sorts of uneven parallels with a well-known historic character are indeed quite risky and betray an oddly targeted narrative. Were the play better focused and more consistently developed some of these sources of inspiration might have been better served.<\/p>\n

Overall – a complex family story with an appealing enough narrator-protagonist but with generally unfocused dramatic elements and an oddly inconsistent tone that does not adequately merge its implicit drama with its attempta at humor.<\/p>\n

– BADMan (aka Charles Munitz)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Play (2024)
\nby Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
\nDirected by Josiah Davis
\nHuntington Theatre Company<\/a>
\nBoston Center for the Arts
\nSouth End, Boston
\nSeptember 10 – October 11, 2026<\/strong>
\nA play told from the perspective of a young man from a dysfunctional family in which his pastor father was a noted black activist in the Civil Rights movement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38077,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-plays","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38067"}],"version-history":[{"count":35,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38298,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38067\/revisions\/38298"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}