Review: PURPOSE at Steppenwolf Theatre Company

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins has set the table for one hell of a family dinner in PURPOSE.

Directed by Phylicia Rashad in a world premiere for Steppenwolf, this family drama keenly focuses on the privileged Jasper family, whose patriarch is a Civil Rights icon. The first act moves at a brilliant clip with lots of darkly funny moments during a contentious family drama, then unspools into a more serious and somber contemplation of the skeletons in the family’s closet in the second. 

Jacobs-Jenkins brilliantly explores the tension between celebrity and real-life in the play; while patriarch Reverend Solomon “Sonny” Jasper might be upheld as a figure of living history, that doesn’t mean his record is squeaky clean. The family dinner at the play’s center is a simultaneous belated birthday celebration for matriarch Claudine and a “homecoming” for oldest son Junior, a former senator newly released from 20 months in prison for embezzlement. Junior’s wife Morgan will soon follow in his footsteps with a short prison stint for tax evasion. Youngest son Nazareth “Naz” serves as the play’s narrator and perhaps the sole Jasper family member who desperately longs to avoid the spotlight. But he arrives at the family reunion in Chicago with his friend Aziza in tow, who serves as the outside audience for some of the most intimate family politics. 

Jon Michael Hill gives a warm, grounded, and amiable performance as Naz. Hill immediately endears audiences to his character, and his subtle but commanding performance is a beautiful contrast to the larger-than-life characters that comprise his family members. Tamara Tunie has fantastic “Mama Bear” energy as Claudine; she wants to know everything and anything that her sons are up to, and she spats with her daughter-in-law in a stunning battle. Alana Arenas answers with a blazing, blistering meltdown in the first act that demonstrates just how fed up she is with the Jaspers’ antics (though her sobbing breakdown in act two was less convincing). Glenn Davis is both amiable and frustratingly cocky as Junior; at the dinner table, he soliloquizes about the letters that Claudine wrote to him while he was imprisoned. Davis’s laid-back yet self-aggrandizing energy is a delicious choice for Junior. Harry Lennix is equally excellent as Sonny, who seems ready to settle in for a quiet retirement even as he grapples with trying to understand his sons. As Aziza, Ayanna Bria Bakari exudes initial excitement at meeting one of her childhood heroes but that excitement becomes complicated when she realizes the implications it might have for her informal arrangement to have Naz serve as her sperm donor. Bakari finds a balance between genuine excitement and refined moments of contemplation, particularly in her second act monologue. 

Like other great American family dramas, Jacobs-Jenkins has provided a structure for PURPOSE that builds to a blistering crescendo at the end of the first act. While tension in the Jasper family slowly builds in the first half, the pacing never sags, and Jacobs-Jenkins brilliantly infuses keenly-observed dark humor. The second act is far more somber, and while it lulls in spots and could use a trim, it also highlights that the family secrets laid bare in the first act will have some serious consequences. 

In PURPOSE, Jacobs-Jenkins interestingly displays the complex inner workings of the supremely public Jasper family, and the play unpacks the deeply personal consequences of when those lines between public and private life blur. 

PURPOSE runs through April 28, 2024 in the Downstairs Theater at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, 1650 North Halsted. 

Photo Credit: Michael Brosilow

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