Technically speaking, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ new play Purpose isn’t about a dysfunctional family reuniting for the holidays and revealing various fractures and secrets in their relationships – not the holiday part, anyway.
The Jasper family, led by prominent Black activist Solomon Jasper (Harry Lennix), is getting together in Chicago under far less superficially merry circumstances: yes, it’s a relief that older son Junior (Glenn Davis) has recently been released from prison following time served for a campaign-fraud conviction, but his wife, Morgan (Alana Arenas), is about to begin her own sentence for her role in these crimes, understandably bitter about where her loyalties have landed her. The couple was allowed to serve consecutively in light of their having young children – whose absence from this gathering bothers willful matriarch Claudine (LaTanya Richardson Jackson) to no end, especially because it’s nominally a celebration of her weeks-earlier birthday. The show’s narrator, withdrawn younger son Nazareth (Jon Michael Hill), accidentally provides the token outsider via his friend Aziza (Kara Young), who volunteers to drive him after he misses his flight.
