Transcript
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Thank you very much. That's all.
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But we have a great dramatic finish. Oh, I'm sure you do, but Mr. Gramster.
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Ah. Hit it.
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Broadway. Broadway. We've missed it. So we're leaving soon and taking June to star her in a show. Bright lights, white light, rhythm and romance. The train is late so while we wait we're gonn do a little dance. Hello all you theater lovers both out and proud and on the DL. And welcome back to Broadway Breakdown, a podcast discussing the history, legacy of American theater's most exclusive address, Broadway. I am your host, Matt Koplik, the least famous and most opinionated of all the Broadway podcast hosts. And today is yet another review day. It's gonna be a lot of these until Tony time, everybody. This is a double review day. But also the first review is gonna shorter side, which is Purpose. And that's because Purpose, by the time this episode comes out, will have been opened on Broadway for about a month now. Y' all will have read those reviews. If you haven't seen it and are planning to see it, my review isn't gonna make you feel more like you need to see it or sway you to not see it and whatnot. This is just, you know, as we cover the rest of the Broadway season. Purpose does run though, until July. So if you are on the fence about seeing it and listen to this episode, maybe that'll help you make up your mind. Purpose is most recent play by Brandon Jacobs Jenkins. It is a Steppenwolf Theater Company production that's being done at Second Stage. Brandon Jacobs Jenkins. I always have to say that in my head before I say it because I always want to say Brandon Jacob Jenkins. But it's Jacobs Jenkins. He is best known recently for Appropriate, which was a phenomenal night of theater that I loved about like a year and a half ago that I saw that. Yeah. At. At the Hays. And this is a newer play of his. This one centers around a prominent African American family living. I believe they're living in D.C. around D.C. yeah. And sort of the history of this family as well as the dynamics as they currently stand and sort of what's happened to them, what's going to happen to them and. And sort of their legacy and the legacy of. Of African Americans in this country as well as just people. Something that I think that Brandon Jacobs Jenkins does very well is taking a microcosm, you know, select group of folks and then really making us find our own mirror to what's going on on stage as well as, you know, the mirror of society. And I think that that's something that a really talented playwright does well and that we don't always get. The thing about purpose, and I should say this now, unfortunately, Ms. Kara Young was out the performance of Purpose that I saw. Her lovely understudy Sojourner Brown played Aziza Huston. And I thought Sojourner did a wonderful job, thought they were very compelling, had a really clear perspective on the character. I would have loved to have seen what Kara had done with it. But I'll also say this, Aziza wasn't necessarily my favorite character in the show. So even though I didn't see Kara, and I'm sure Kara would have brought a lot of her Ms. Young, if you're nasty energy to it, I don't think that I missed anything about the play. Or rather to say I don't think my perspective on the play would have changed much with Carrie Young and the show that day, which is to say purpose I found to be very good. I think I went in with maybe a little too high expectations because I did really love appropriate. And the reviews overall for Purpose were extremely strong. One of the few dissenting voices was Jesse Green, who was mixed, ish positive on it. And you all know that I'm not here to ring Mr. Green's bell, but I will say I was a little more in line with him than some of the other critics. On purpose, I was positive. I was positive on it, but I wasn't effusive. The first thing that should be said about Purpose is that it is directed very well. Phylicia Rashad, who is a very talented actress who has some opinions about Bill Cosby that I don't necessarily share, has turned out to also be a very talented director. Surprise, surprise. Sometimes really great actors make really great directors. And she's done a really fantastic job with the ensemble work here and small little nuances of characters in bits of staging and then has a really clear perspective. It's also very beautifully designed set. It's a gorgeous family mansion with a lot of taste and history about it. The cast overall I found very strong. I had a couple of standouts, and I'll get to those in just a moment. The main character, I guess you could say, if there is one, would be Nazareth Jasper of the Jasper family. Naz, as he's often called, played by John Michael Hill. Naz is the narrator of the show as well as the, I guess you could say, like the inciting character of the show. Nazareth sort of rejects his family's legacy and goes off on his own journey and doesn't go into politics and civil liberties in the way that his father did. His father, Solomon Jasper, played by Harry Lennox, we find out, is a very famous historical civil rights activist who marched with Martin Luther King and did a great deal for black families and black citizens of America throughout his time and has sort of become, I guess you would call him. They call him Reverend. I don't know if he's like an official reverend or if it's sort of like a title. But he, you know, he has. He has made a place for himself in history. And his wife, played by Latonya Richardson Jackson. Claudine, she is a, you know, she is, technically speaking, a lawyer, but she has not practiced in a very long time. She sort of gave up her career to be Solomon's unofficial first lady of their family, as well as kind of, we find out, cleaning up a lot of his legal messes that are all happening behind closed doors. And Naz comes to celebrate Claudine's belated birthday. And his friend Aziza, that's usually played by Carrie Young in his. In this, my performance, is played by Sojourner Brown. She is a former neighbor of Nazareth's, who we learn, decided, you know, she's. She's a lesbian who. Or queer woman who wants a baby. And because she likes Nazareth, who we learn is most likely asexual and possibly even on the spectrum, but there's never been an official test for him to be diagnosed as such. She likes him. She finds him a kind and smart person. He's also a very talented photographer. And she, before the events of the play, we learn that she and he went to Niagara Falls so she could receive his semen to make a baby. And then she drops him off at his family's for Clawdeen's belated birthday party. And then Aziza ends up coming in because he forgot his phone charger and she's delivering it. And the family misinterprets this as thinking that she is his girlfriend. And because it is snowing bleakly outside, they insist that she stay with them. Only eventually they find out the truth, that they are not together, that she is queer, and that they are aiming to make a baby so she can have a child. The other two characters are Nazareth's brother, Solomon junior Jasper, who they all call Junior, played by Glenn Davis, who I saw or whom I saw in Downstate at Playwrights Horizons twice, phenomenal actor. And then Solomon Jr's wife, Morgan Jasper, played by Alana Arenas. More on Alana Arenas in a Second. So this, this is all like, you know, very strong family, meaty drama. The other thing I haven't mentioned is Junior has recently come out of prison. He was arrested and found guilty of corruption and money laundering. And he and his wife both have been convicted, but they have separate sentences, so that way they can have proper child care for their children. Junior went first, and now there's sort of like a little brief stint before Morgan has to go in. Morgan is at the house with the whole family. She does not want to be there. She is doing as much as she can to steer clear of all the festivities. She mostly stays up in her room. She is corralled into coming down for dinner, which she enters the staircase in what I can only describe as like a faux poochie top and the biggest sunglasses you've ever seen coming down like a goddamn regal queen. It was incredible. And we learn sort of what's been going on with this family and what where the family is heading. And again, certain skeletons that maybe have been in the closet of this family. Similar vibes. A bit to appropriate, but also with like a little touch of Cat in a Hot Tin Roof. I think Brandon Jacobs Jenkins is someone who finds inspiration from great theater of the past and puts his own modern spin on it and gives it enough of his own tweaks that it doesn't feel necessarily like a retread. It feels like a brand new story. What I really liked about this play, besides the ensemble work, was I really found it to be incredibly funny and had a lot of interesting insight into generational gaps and sort of how one generation can be the dominating progressive side of culture. And then as they get older and they start to get more comfortable and honestly more bitter at the world and at the generations behind them, they start to get a lot more rigid and conservative in their ways. Even if they, technically speaking, marched on Washington, they now are in a state where they look down on such rambunctious behavior in the younger generations. And that's something that we see it with Solomon. You know, Sunny Jasper Harry Lennox. He is a man who has made a great deal of history, has meant so much to so many people, including people like Aziza, who just can't get over that she's in this house and then ends up kind of turning on the family when she sees just how dysfunctional they are. And also what a rather awful father Solomon is to his two sons. He does not understand Nazareth's sexuality and thus he dismisses it. We also learned that Junior most likely has some sort of Mental disorder that also has not been diagnosed because both Nazareth and Junior's parents wouldn't let them get tested. So they absolutely have something going on that we don't know for sure because the parents refuse to let it get done. So it's all sort of speculation. While this is all happening, by the way, Nazareth, John Michael Hill is constantly narrating to the audience. This is a great tool that, in my opinion, is overused. It provides a great deal of information. It provides a great deal of perspective on Naz. But it is a device that I wish that if Brandon Jacobs Jenkins were to take another pass at this play, and he can, you know, he wrote the play that he wanted, so he can do whatever he so damn well chooses. But if he's looking to take another pass at it for a play that is 2 hours and 50 minutes, I can't say that all of it flies by. And there are places where things can absolutely be trimmed and tweaked, one of which is narration. Now, those of you who know that I wrote a play also know that my play has quite a bit of narration in it. But the narration does not break up the scene work. Every five minutes, there are monologue sections that break the fourth wall. And there are two sequences in my play where narration is happening throughout. A dramatic sort of montage, one might say, but it is woven in and out. It never fully stops the action. The narration in purpose absolutely stops the action, intentionally so. And sometimes it's very nice. And sometimes it is Nazareth explaining the subtext out loud, which for me takes away a lot of the power of the. Of what could be unsaid, what could not be said. Right. It's for those of you who maybe are more musical theater people and not drama people. It's the saying out loud what the. What a song would not be addressing. So, for example, in Matilda, a musical I like very much, There's a song Ms. Honey sings called My House. And Matilda is telling, Ms. Honey, your aunt pushed you out of your house and your father is dead, basically. Not basically, but basically saying to her, like, your aunt pushed you out of your house and your father is dead. Like, aren't you angry? And then Miss Honey sings the song My House, and it's her taking ownership of what she has. And the undercurrent is she is angry, she is bitter, she is frustrated. But also, this is her safe space. This is her freedom. And she's not addressing the things that make her angry. She's only going to talk about the things that she has Control over. That's a very powerful thing to do. If there all of a sudden was a bridge where she then goes on a Jason Robert Brown esque musical, word vomit about all the things that frustrate her, then yes, I would then say, okay, well, now the song has lost its power because we're saying the invisible stuff out loud. And a lot of the narration that Naz has in purpose is saying the quiet stuff out loud. Things that we don't need to say, things that we can interpret for ourselves. And that is just. It's such a simple thing for me in terms of a tweak where I'm like, I think, go in and make it an assignment to cut out half of Nazareth's inner monologues and you can pick exactly which stuff adds up to the half of his monologues. If you want to take away all of the Act 2 stuff, or just some of the Act 2 stuff, and some of the Act 1 stuff, or all the stuff at the top of Act 1, whatever Brandon Jacobs Jenkins thinks is correct. But I do think removing half of that narration would be helpful. The other thing I'll say is that while Act 1 is a compact, insightful and hilarious first act, I wouldn't necessarily say it's perfect because it does go on a bit. Partly because of the narration. Act two goes on for a lot of it and has some plot points that kind of meander and go off into nothing. There's a whole element with Junior, with bees, with his father's rifles downstairs that all kind of culminate into a messy breaking point, but it all just sort of continues onwards and. And goes from hilarious or tense or very tense to just going on for five minutes too long. And that same is also true of a lot of the dialogue in Act 2. As I said, there's narration as well that should absolutely be cut. But especially in the last 20 minutes of the play, there are a lot of lines that Brandon Jacobs Jenkins writes that are insightful, powerful and concise. They are razor sharp. And you think, oh, wow, that's a great line. And that encompasses so much of what's been going on in this play, only for that character to then continue speaking on exactly what they just said, not going on into a new direction, like still talking about what they were talking about after having landed the plane. They then continue to try to fly the plane some more. And it frustrates me because when you hear dialogue as good as what he can write and then hear what absolutely should be the capping point, it's not that I necessarily am so good at writing that I am coming on high and telling people how to write, but I will say I do have an intuitive sense for other people's writing of when they've nailed it and then when they go on for too long or when they haven't gone on for long enough. And there are so many times in Act 2, in the second half especially, there's a scene between Sunny, Jasper, the father, and Naz at the end where there's so many moments where both characters land the plane and then they just continue to talk. And it is. It was very frustrating for me. I was sitting there, no, no, like, you got it. You're done. You're finished. Move on to the next bit. Now, especially as we were, quote, unquote, wrapping up moments, I was like, can we. Can we actually wrap this up now for real? Real. There's also a moment with Latonya, Richardson, Jackson, as everything is sort of kind of breaking up with the whole family. And Aziza's trying to leave and everything's going on. And Latanya as Claudine, she is sort of vouching for herself. She is standing up for herself to each character, and then especially talking to Aziza about children and being a mother. And you do not get to choose your child. The child chooses you. And you don't know you may not be fit to be a parent. If you want the perfect circumstances for each child, like, it is a gift given to you by God, and you sign for the gift, no matter what comes inside. You're. You're accepting it with understanding that you will love whatever comes inside. And it's a great image. Right? It's a great idea. And it's so. And it, again, it sort of perfectly lands the plane. And then she starts to repeat things she had said two minutes earlier. And it is. It's the musical theater person in me and the writer in me and the critic in me and the dramaturg in me that hears this and goes, no, no, no, We. We got it. We got it so hard. No, it's. It's as if. So those of you who may know Steel Magnolias, which I. Which, in my opinion, is not a great play, but it's a good play, and it's actually a better movie. And it's not a great movie, but it's a good movie. But it has moments where the playwright really does sort of nail the line and knows when to not have that character continue talking. And when Shelby and her mother. So in the play Shelby and her mother are talking about how Shelby is pregnant and she's excited because she wants to have a baby. And her mother is nervous because Shelby is diabetic and her body's already kind of been ravaged by diabetes. And she's been warned that having a baby could really cause trauma to her body. And in the play, the way that this scene happens is her mother. I think it's Truvy. I think that. No, Truvy is the woman who owns the shop. I forget the name of Shelby's mother, but it's Sally Field in the movie. Sally Field in the play version of Steel Magnolias, is sitting in one of the hair salon chairs and she's stuck there because the power has gone out, but she needs to stay under the lamp or whatever it is, so when the power does come on, she doesn't ruin her hair as she's getting it set. So Shelby is talking with her mother. Her mother can't move. So they're having this whole conversation together. And when they're sort of going back and forth about yes or no, have the baby, don't. Shelby finally says, what's a very famous line from Steel Magnolias. I would rather have 20 minutes of something wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special. And that is when the power comes back on and sort of their argument, because the scene has to go in a new direction now. And that is smart writing, because that's the playwright going, I just wrote a great line. I can't have her continue talking after that. So we have to move the scene in a different direction. And I would argue Purpose is a better play than Steel Magnolias. But it could take a note from that sort of economy and knowing when to move on. We say ironically, as somebody who has a very famously long podcast. That said, again, wonderful performances across the board, I want to give a special shout out to Alana Arenas, who I. Nobody informed me that Morgan Jasper was going to be my favorite character in Purpose. She has lost the most because of what's going on with this family. She entered this family having worked her way up with her working class mother. They were cleaning houses, all in the rich areas of their town. She moved to Maryland, meets Junior, marries him after, I think, even getting a law degree, marries him and sort of gives up her degree to be his first lady in the same way that Claudine became Solomon's first lady and gives him two children only for him to then completely fuck them over. And now she has to go to jail because of this for something she didn't do and had no knowledge of. And she's looking to get out of the family. She's looking to get what she needs so she can live a life, have her children. But ultimately, this family has fucked her over so much that even that's not really possible. And even if she gets what she wants, it's not going to be a lot. And Morgan has such disdain for everyone in the room, but she's also going through a lot of pain, and she's also setting up tests for everyone in the family just to sort of see who's on her side and who actually cares about her. And she's learned that Sunny, her husband, doesn't really care about her. He likes her fine. He likes what she's done for him, and he sort of cares about her when it's convenient for him. When he wants something and she gives it to him, he appreciates that, but he's not really willing to risk anything or put himself out on the limb for her, which is something we've talked about on this podcast of sort of conditional love. I think many of us have experienced that before, right? And it hurts when you love someone and you care about someone and you've given so much for someone thinking that they'll do the same for you and have sort of gaslight yourself into thinking they've done it for you. And then when the chips are actually down, you realize how little they've actually given you, how little they're willing to give you, how little they're willing to give up for you. And so you see a woman like Morgan, who has reached the end of her rope, is trying to figure out an exit strategy while also not giving two shits about how she comes off to anyone in that family. So that dinner scene, it's very Steppenwolf. It was giving me Augustos H County vibes. It was fraught with tension while also being hilarious. The gift that Junior gives his mother for her belated birthday is pretty fantastic. And also, as Naz calls him, the king of the pivot, how he uses that gift for his own political gain. And then his father ripping him a new asshole, and then Morgan just sort of coming out and ripping them all a new asshole. It's wonderful. And Alanna Arenas just. God, she does so much with so little. Fires bazookas when she needs to, but just is so. It's a wonderful performance, because in the wrong hands, Morgan could just be comic relief and could just be, you know. Yes, Work mama boots the house down. It is that, but with an undercurrent of rage and toxic poison. And I loved it. I loved watching her every time she was on stage. I was thrilled and I wanted more of her. But in Brandon Jacobs Jenkins defense, he uses just the right amount of her. So the fact that I wanted more is not the fact that the play had a failure. It's just like they knew what I needed and they gave it to me full out. Overall, yes, I recommend purpose. It's not quite the masterpiece that I think Appropriate is, I think, but also Appropriate supposedly had quite a few iterations between its New York productions. And Jesse Green even acknowledged so in his review for the Broadway production of Sarah Paulson. I mean, half of his review was mapping out all the changes that Jenkins did and improved the show, which is an issue I always have with Green is like he'll talk about source material of shows or changes shows have made and just spend half of his review talking about that instead of the show itself. But I'm interested to see if Jenkins does another pass at purpose, if there's anything he would finesse about it. Because I think it could use a little sharpening. There's so much meat there. It's just about curing it a little more. The characters are all well defined. The drama is good. It's just about. Yeah, it's just about sharpening. It's about cutting some of the fat, I think. And that is, you know, that's a great problem to have. I think cutting is the easiest thing to do in the world. So if that is my only real major note for purpose, then they're playing with house money as far as I'm concerned. That's purpose for right now. Tony Wise. I think they're absolutely getting nominated for play. Probably going to get nominated for director and scenic design. May be lighting as well. The lighting works a lot with Naz's inner monologue and the regular scene work. And then acting wise, I mean, listen, I obviously did not see Carrie Young, but you never bet against Carrie Young when it comes to featured actress in a play and she could be going four years in a row now. For nominations, I would absolutely nominate Alana Arenas. I feel like latanya Richardson Jackson is going to get nominated, but I would really love it if Alanna got in of the Men. Honestly, I would say Glen Davis was my favorite and he had a really hard role. John Michael Hill is most likely going to be considered lead for this, which is fine. I think it's pretty much an ensemble piece. But John Michael Hill is very much the largest part of the show. And I think he never leaves the stage, as far as I'm concerned. If I can recall correctly, I think he's the only one who never leaves the stage. But, yeah, I mean, I think it's got strong Tony chances, at least for nominations. I can't rightfully say that this is an upset for Best play to win, but, I mean, hey, anything could happen. But to talk more about Tony chances and what could possibly win in some play categories, let's take a quick break and then talk about John Proctor as the villain, shall we? So let's take a break. Billy, I'd beg to differ with you. How do you mean? You're the top. Yeah.