STAGE WEST: "Purpose" at La Jolla Playhouse

Left to right: Matthew Elijah Webb, Stephanie Berry, Sean Boyce Johnson, Crystal Dickinson and Andrea Agosto in "Purpose."                                                                                      Photo by Rich Soublet II

            In the lushly appointed Chicago home of the Jaspers, what stands out most is a prominent living room shrine to the Civil Rights Movement and in particular, to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. A side portrait of King, looking determinedly ahead as if seeing his Dream in the reachable distance, is a fixture behind the drama of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ “Purpose.” It is, at the same time, at the forefront of the many trenchant questions posed in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, among them how to navigate the aftermath of activism at its most passionate and what that looks like.
            La Jolla Playhouse could not have chosen a more important and engrossing play to launch its new season. Directed by Delicia Turner Sonnenberg (following up another estimable and perceptive turn directing August Wilson’s “Fences” at the Old Globe) and featuring a superior cast, all but one of whom onstage for the first time at the Playhouse, “Purpose” demonstrates why it has been such an honored work (Tony winner for Best Play a year ago in addition to the Pulitzer for Drama) and why it’s an important contribution to American theater.
            Jacobs-Jenkins has said he wanted to write about a Black dynastic family, something that hadn’t been done before, but also to reflect its relationship to the American conscience, the American soul. Though inspired by the family of Jesse Jackson, “Purpose” is a product of its own identity, making powerful statements about self and relationships, and able to be both relevant on a broad scale and relatable individually. The events of one snowy weekend at the home  of Rev. Solomon “Sonny” Jasper (Cornell Womack), including a sudden series of emotional explosions around a dinner table, could well mirror those in many homes where fraught or estranged family members sit down together – no matter whether a prayer precedes the meal or whatever color the family.
            In San Diego, “Purpose” arrives about a year after Jacobs-Jenkins’ previous Tony-winning drama “Appropriate” was produced at the Old Globe. (It was my personal favorite production of 2025.) Like “Appropriate,” “Purpose” is a family story but one even more layered, and while just as intense and fervent not as mean-spirited – though those mean spirits have a lot to do with “Appropriate’s” shockingly comic appeal. “Purpose” is also more internalized. In both, the family interrelationships are ever on the cusp of boiling over. In each, the play’s title might as well have been followed by a question mark, as Jacobs-Jenkins’ asks audiences to identify, define and most of all to THINK.
            The play’s Rev. Jasper is a legendary figure in the fight for civil rights, a stalwart voice of justice who marched on Selma, who knew Rosa Parks, who stood shoulder to shoulder with Dr. King and John Lewis. He is an icon now in retirement and tending to his hives of bees, yet harboring secrets and resentments that flash with ferocity when his two sons, Solomon Junior (Sean Boyce Johnson) and Nazareth (Matthew Elijah Webb) come to the house after a long time away. A celebration of the pastor’s wife, Claudine’s (Stephanie Berry) birthday is decreed by Claudine herself to be another, more significant celebration: that of Junior’s release from imprisonment.
            A disgraced state senator, Junior has served his time for embezzlement of campaign funds. In a painfully ironic twist, his wife Morgan (Crystal Dickinson) is now herself prison bound, for not paying taxes. The two were allowed to serve their respective terms consecutively in order to not leave their two children in Washington, D.C. parentless.
            Naz, meanwhile, is a nature photographer who has reluctantly abandoned his work in Ontario Canada with its countless lakes and ever-present mist to join the Jasper family from whom he long ago separated on multiple levels. A platonic friend, Aziza Houston (Andrea Agosto), has driven him all the way to Chicago during the threat of a storm, not intending to be part of the family festivities. We learn early on that Naz, who identifies as non-sexual, has agreed to provide the seed of what Aziza hopes will be a longed-for pregnancy.
            Is it any surprise that Aziza ends up occupying a chair at that explosive family table?
            Naz serves as the Fourth Wall-breaking narrator of “Purpose,” not only prefacing scenes and dramas to come but even departing from the unfolding story momentarily to explain to, contextualize for, or warn the audience. “Buckle up,” he says in one conspicuous, pre-dinnertime aside.
            Most of the time I find such a narrator a contrivance, but in “Purpose” Naz is the audience’s confidante, the one who grounds us amid the conflicts and reminds us too that we are all family in some way or another. Naz is not perfect; neither is any of us. The likable and sympathetic Webb is remarkably accessible to us and even when Naz shows himself to be imperfect (at the expense of his good friend Aziza), our connection to him and his storytelling remains strong.
            It’s a good thing we’re told to buckle up before that dinner table scene, which immediately becomes a metaphorical food fight. It starts with the first of many tensions to come between Sonny and Junior over who will say grace and how. Junior’s subsequent birthday gift to his mother – letters she’d written him while he was incarcerated now turned into a book – ramps up the father/son acrimony. Aziza, who’d been told by Naz not to talk about the sperm donation or either of their sexualities, does so – earnestly and in her mind innocently. Strike three.
            It all goes ballistic when Morgan lets the recriminations and accusations fly, for which she ultimately receives a face slap from Claudine. A threat follows.
            Dessert anyone?
            Claudine’s birthday cake goes uneaten (until, tellingly, Morgan helps herself to a slice in the night).
            All this in the first act.
            Yes, “Purpose” is lengthy – nearly three hours in toto. Its dramas-within-the-drama are complex and intertwining. But Jacobs-Jenkins has instilled enough comic dialogue and lightness amid all the fireworks to ensure the following: that there is needed catharsis; and that the behavior of the Jaspers one and all is understandable to us because we see ourselves, despite different circumstances, and we too look for lightness in the dark when we can.
            The Playhouse audience on opening night laughed so hard that some character exchanges were drowned out, or actors paused to let the laughter fade. So deft is “Purpose” in its narrative and emotive affect that it can be invested in as both Greek tragedy and sharp-honed comedy.
            Few contemporary playwrights employ the richness and breadth of language that Jacobs-Jenkins does, yet those in “Purpose” given the most to say – Solomon and Claudine – are not just speechifying. This is a subtle stroke of craft and execution, a synergy between writer, director and actors.
            Womack and Berry as the patriarch and matriarch of the Jaspers are the anchors of the production – parents in turmoil and, as the dust-ups and revelations engulf the house, compelled to reconcile themselves to difficult truths. Claudine is the fierce protector of her children and of the Jasper dynasty up and through the moments when doing so would seem to do as much damage as good. As for the pastor, a man at sea after a lifetime of righteous activism now past him, his shouting is subsumed by his own conscience over his spousal infidelity.
            Jacobs-Jenkins’ script references a crisis of purpose, and it’s this that pervades the lives and fates of each of these characters in some way.
            Johnson’s performance as the unanchored, broken brother Junior is rending, as is Dickinson’s desperate, bitter spouse Morgan.
            It’s great to see locally based actor Agosto getting her Playhouse debut as Aziza, the unaware dinner guest who is subject to all the fire and fury of the Jasper household. She brings energy and humor to the fore, and it’s easy to see why even the very private Naz might have valued their friendship, one that began during the COVID-19 lockdown.
            The Jasper home with its hardwood floors and stately staircase sweeping upward in the light of tall draperied windows behind which skies darken then brighten and snowflakes fall, was designed by Lawrence E. Moten III. It’s deceptively cozy and peaceful given how unsettled are the proceedings within it. Even with all the furnishings and strategic points of light, however, that portrait of MLK is ever-present.
            Dr. King’s courage, idealism and, yes, purpose are there, framed and frozen in another time, in the anxious and joyless Jasper domain.
            For all the Jaspers, even those who knew him, the searching will continue.
            “Purpose” runs through June 7 at La Jolla Playhouse’s Mandell Weiss Theatre on the UCSD campus.