Purpose (Play)

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    8 New Shows Our Theater Critics Are Talking About

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    A British satirical comedy, a Tennessee Williams classic, a soundscape of Havana: These are productions worth knowing about.Critic’s PickAndrew Scott, Andrew Scott, Andrew Scott …‘Vanya’Directed by Sam Yates and adapted by Simon Stephens, this one-man “Vanya” — in which Andrew Scott delivers a tour-de-force performance — arrives Off Broadway after a run in London, where it won an Olivier for best play revival. Though faithful to the original material, the production offers not just modern touches, but also “a new way of seeing into the heart of its beauty,” our critic wrote.From Jesse Green’s review:What makes the production exemplary, like the play itself, is the emotion. I hate to think why Scott is such a sadness machine, but the tears (and blushes and glows and sneers) lie very shallow under his skin. He only rarely raises his voice. As the feelings are evidently coming directly and carefully from his heart, he narrowcasts them directly and carefully at yours.Through May 11 at the Lucille Lortel Theater. Read the full review.Critic’s PickThe lush sounds of Havana.“Buena Vista Social Club” at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater features choreography by Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times‘Buena Vista Social Club’The joyous horns and full-bodied voices that make up the beloved 1997 album come alive in this Broadway musical, with a book by Marco Ramirez, direction by Saheem Ali and choreography by Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck. Though the show offers a fictional back story for these veteran Cuban musicians who shot to global fame after recording the album, the thrill here is the music, exuberant and expansive, which fills in the beats of Cuba’s history, both in sorrow and in revelry.From Elisabeth Vincentelli’s review:The spirit of the musical “Buena Vista Social Club” is evident in its opening scene. … The music is center stage, and we immediately understand its power as a communal experience that binds people. Therein lies the production’s greatest achievement. For a place where music so often plays a crucial role, Broadway hardly ever highlights the thrill of music making itself.At the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater. Read the full review.A ferocious Paul Mescal in a Tennessee Williams classic.Downhill with no brakes: Patsy Ferran as Blanche and Paul Mescal as Stanley in “A Streetcar Named Desire” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times‘A Streetcar Named Desire’Paul Mescal and Patsy Ferran dance with violence and desire as Stanley and Blanche in Rebecca Frecknall’s gritty revival of Tennessee Williams’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. In the absence of beauty, brutality pervades in Frecknall’s darker production, which features a utilitarian set and exhilarating performances that ratchet up the fury. From Jesse Green’s review:Mescal is best known and deservedly praised for excruciatingly sensitive portrayals of hurting hunks who can barely acknowledge their pain. (I can’t speak for “Gladiator II,” but he is superb in “Normal People,” “Aftersun” and “All of Us Strangers.”) It was therefore not immediately evident that he could do justice to a character, first played by Marlon Brando, that Arthur Miller described as a “sexual terrorist.” I am sorry to report that he can.Through April 6 at the Harvey Theater, Brooklyn Academy of Music. Read the full review.Critic’s PickThe vicious nature of the truth.Andrew Barth Feldman (on the floor) with Joanna Gleason in “We Had a World.”Jeremy Daniel We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Purpose’ Review: Dinner With the Black Political Elite

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      A family not unlike Jesse Jackson’s gets barbecued on Broadway by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins.You may have trouble catching your breath from laughing so hard during the first act of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s sophomore Broadway outing, “Purpose,” which opened Monday at the Helen Hayes Theater. Deeply imagined and grave beneath its yucks, it unspools like a brilliant sitcom.Then, also like a sitcom, it jumps the shark.Ah well, mixed emotions go with the territory. If “Purpose” is primarily a merciless dissection of hypocrisy in an important religious-political Black American family — the Jesse Jackson dynasty comes to mind — it is also a grudging love letter to them in all their God-praising, backroom-dealing, self-promotional glory. The problem is that in the constant switchback of perspectives, the play, directed by Phylicia Rashad, grows too hectic and attenuated to maintain a line of conviction.The same could be said of the family, the Jaspers. Chicago-based like the Jacksons — the play originated at the Steppenwolf Theater Company in that city — they, too, are headed by an oratorical pastor who, in his youth, worked closely with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Also familiar are several possible unauthorized offspring, hushed up but not quite silent. Jacobs-Jenkins cannot help noting that among that generation of Bible-quoting civil rights worthies are enough sins of the father to burden a host of sons.Indeed, approaching 80 and withdrawn from the front lines, Solomon Jasper (Harry Lennix) now reserves most of his thunder for his family. His formidable wife, Claudine, a honeyed matriarch with a law degree, is tough enough to shape it to her own ends as needed. But on their disappointing sons falls the brunt of Solomon’s biblical disapproval.The older son, named for his father, is the more obviously wayward. Raised to uphold Solomon’s political legacy, Junior (Glenn Davis) instead tarnished it when, as a state senator, he was convicted of embezzling campaign funds. These he spent, according to his embittered wife, Morgan, on “cashmere drawers and betting on racing pigeons.”From left, Jackson, Hill, Young and Alana Arenas.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tony Winner Branden Jacobs-Jenkins Returns to Broadway With ‘Purpose’

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      Branden Jacobs-Jenkins had Broadway success this year with a drama starring Sarah Paulson. In February, he’ll return with a new play directed by Phylicia Rashad.Branden Jacobs-Jenkins won a Tony Award in June for the Broadway production of “Appropriate,” his blistering play about a white Southern family grappling with some serious baggage.This season, Jacobs-Jenkins will return to Broadway, now with “Purpose,” a stormy play about a Black Midwestern family wrestling with its own legacy.“Purpose,” which had a well-received run earlier this year at Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago, is to begin previews Feb. 25 and to open in mid-March at the Helen Hayes Theater. The Broadway production is being directed by Phylicia Rashad, who also directed the play at Steppenwolf; Rashad, best known for “The Cosby Show,” has won two Tony Awards as an actor, for “A Raisin in the Sun” and “Skeleton Crew”; this will be her first time directing on Broadway.Set in contemporary Chicago, “Purpose” is about the Jaspers, a civically engaged family of preachers and politicians. There are some parallels to Jesse Jackson’s family, but the story is fictional.In the play, the family gathers at the home of its patriarch — a civil rights activist and preacher who had marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — to welcome the eldest son, a politician, home from prison as his wife prepares to serve her own sentence. The gathering is complicated by the presence of the younger son, a divinity school dropout, who shows up with an unexpected friend.The critic Chris Jones, writing in The Chicago Tribune, called it an “absolutely not-to-be-missed” play.Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, with the Tony for best revival of a play for “Appropriate.”Evan Agostini/Invision, via Associated PressPhylicia Rashad, with her Tony for best actress in a play for “Skeleton Crew” in 2022. This will be her Broadway directorial debut.Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesJacobs-Jenkins, 39, has for a decade been touted as among the nation’s most important young playwrights. He is a two-time Pulitzer finalist (for “Gloria” and “Everybody”), but “Appropriate” was his first play on Broadway. It took so long for it to get there that the production, which starred Sarah Paulson, was deemed a revival and won the Tony Award in that category. Now, Jacobs-Jenkins is working on a musical adaptation of Prince’s “Purple Rain” that will have an initial production in Minneapolis next spring, while also preparing to return to Broadway with “Purpose.” (And before then, he has a new Off Broadway show this fall: “Give Me Carmelita Tropicana!” at Soho Rep.)“I’m shocked, honored, surprised, confused, nervous,” Jacobs-Jenkins said in a phone interview, referring to having two Broadway plays in a row. “I definitely feel like there’s some kind of turnover: In this post-recovery period, lots of surprising things are happening.”“I feel like suddenly my cohort is stepping into some new space that wasn’t available to us before,” he added.And are “Appropriate” and “Purpose” related? “Not really,” Jacobs-Jenkins said. “But it wouldn’t be ridiculous to read them against each other.”Though the nonprofit Second Stage Theater owns the Helen Hayes Theater, this will be a commercial production. The lead producers include David Stone and Marc Platt, who are the lead producers of “Wicked”; the film producer Debra Martin Chase; the actress LaChanze; and Rashad V. Chambers, Aaron Glick and Steppenwolf. More