Review: PURPOSE Delivers Compelling Drama at The Huntington

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The production runs through October 11 at the Calderwood Pavilion, Boston Center for the Arts

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If the fictional Jasper family in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins ’ 2025 Pulitzer- and Tony-winning drama “Purpose,” at The Huntington’s Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA through October 11, who include an iconic civil rights leader, his sons – a disgraced former state senator and a divinity school dropout – and his steel-willed wife, seem familiar, it’s because the play feels like it’s about the late Rev. Jesse L. Jackson and his family.

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Whether a roman à clef or a made-up tale, Jacobs-Jenkins’ brilliant blending of comedy and drama is a fascinatingly layered look at a multi-generational family with a public-facing respectability that conceals the schisms behind their carefully constructed public façade. When the youngest son, Nazareth, or Naz (Omari K. Chancellor), brings an uninvited guest, Aziza Houston (Kalyne Ashley Coleman ), home to celebrate his mother’s birthday and his brother’s release from prison, we see the Jaspers immediately jump into action: who is this Aziza? and what is she to Naz?

Two things we learn are that Aziza’s humorously expressed idolatry of the Jasper family patriarch is genuine and that when it comes to the Jasper home – designed by Se Hyun Oh as a comfortable, sprawling two-story Chicago structure – the moats are intentional and the welcome mat is nowhere in sight.

After premiering at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre in 2024, the almost three-hour play transferred to Broadway’s Helen Hayes Theatre for the 2024–25 season. It’s since found a home among other epic family dramas like “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” “Death of a Salesman,” “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” “A Raisin in the Sun,” “The Humans,” “August: Osage County,” and Jacobs-Jenkins’s own 2024 Tony Award for Best Play winner, “Appropriate.”

The cast, under the vivid direction of Josiah Davis and in character-defining garb by Costume Designer Celeste Jennings , is spot-on, never putting a wrong foot forward.. Chancellor’s off-beat Nazareth narrates the action just a few beats before something is about to happen, injecting wry humor into the proceedings. His place to the side of his family seems to be by his design.

Other character-revealing vignettes allow each actor to shine. Formidable matriarch Claudine Jasper ( Phyllis Yvonne Stickney ) verbally tears at her daughter-in-law, Morgan (MarHadoo Effeh), while employing ladylike authority to cajole Aziza into agreeing to sign an NDA. Claudine is a whirling dervish when it comes to safeguarding her husband and their family, and Stickney plays her character’s volatility with razor sharpness.

As a civil rights leader who stood with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and is now in the winter of his life, Solomon Jasper ( Ezra Knight ) is head of the family – a political figure, wrapped in religiosity, who uses a stentorian speaking style to make his points. With fewer opportunities to speak from the pulpit, however, his preaching at home has only gotten louder.

These days most of his moral outage is reserved for his eldest son and namesake, Solomon “Junior” Jasper ( Ugo Chukwu ), Morgan’s neurodivergent husband, who lost his state senate seat when convicted of embezzlement. A scene involving Junior’s clumsy attempt to show interest in one of his father’s hobbies offers a heartbreaking look at the widening chasm between father and son.

Morgan, the bowed but never broken daughter-in-law, has her own exasperated insights into the Jasper family. Coupled with her almost serene explanation of how her marriage has failed her, they make Effeh a stand-out among equals.

While the entire company is excellent, Jacobs-Jenkins’ stellar script makes the playwright the star of this show. With “Appropriate,” “An Octoroon” – co-produced by Company One and ArtsEmerson at the Emerson Paramount in Boston a decade ago – “Purpose,” and several other plays to his credit, the 41-year-old is well on his way to becoming one of America’s leading contemporary playwrights. His work is not be missed.

Photo caption: Left to right, MarHadoo Effeh, Ugo Chukwu , Ezra Knight , Phyllis Yvonne Stickney , Kalyne Ashley Coleman , and Omari K. Chancellor in a scene from The Huntington’s production of “Purpose.” Photo by Marc J. Franklin.

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_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/boston/article/Review-A-Play-With-PURPOSE-20261004)._