You might have bother catching your breath from laughing so onerous through the first act of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s sophomore Broadway outing, “Purpose,” which opened Monday on the Helen Hayes Theater. Deeply imagined and grave beneath its yucks, it unspools like a superb sitcom.
Then, additionally like a sitcom, it jumps the shark.
Ah effectively, combined feelings go along with the territory. If “Objective” is primarily a cruel dissection of hypocrisy in an necessary religious-political Black American household — the Jesse Jackson dynasty involves thoughts — it is usually a grudging love letter to them in all their God-praising, backroom-dealing, self-promotional glory. The issue is that within the fixed switchback of views, the play, directed by Phylicia Rashad, grows too hectic and attenuated to take care of a line of conviction.
The identical might be stated of the household, the Jaspers. Chicago-based just like the Jacksons — the play originated at the Steppenwolf Theater Company in that metropolis — they, too, are headed by an oratorical pastor who, in his youth, labored carefully with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Additionally acquainted are a number of doable unauthorized offspring, hushed up however not fairly silent. Jacobs-Jenkins can’t assist noting that amongst that era of Bible-quoting civil rights worthies are sufficient sins of the daddy to burden a number of sons.
Certainly, approaching 80 and withdrawn from the entrance traces, Solomon Jasper (Harry Lennix) now reserves most of his thunder for his household. His formidable spouse, Claudine, a honeyed matriarch with a legislation diploma, is hard sufficient to form it to her personal ends as wanted. However on their disappointing sons falls the brunt of Solomon’s biblical disapproval.
The older son, named for his father, is the extra clearly wayward. Raised to uphold Solomon’s political legacy, Junior (Glenn Davis) as a substitute tarnished it when, as a state senator, he was convicted of embezzling marketing campaign funds. These he spent, in accordance with his embittered spouse, Morgan, on “cashmere drawers and betting on racing pigeons.”
