Review: PURPOSE at La Jolla Playhouse
Playing through June 7th at La Jolla Playhouse
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ “Purpose”, now playing at La Jolla Playhouse through June 7, is a Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning play that takes one messy, snowed-in family weekend and turns it into something hilariously chaotic, emotionally sharp, and painfully recognizable. Whether the audience sees themselves in the family tension, the impossible expectations, or simply the awkwardness of sitting through a dinner gone horribly wrong,“Purpose” lands because it understands how complicated families can be.
The Jasper family is headed by Rev. Solomon “Sonny” Jasper (Cornell Womack), a legendary civil rights figure who marched alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and built an entire family legacy around excellence, public service, and respectability. His formidable wife, Claudine (Stephanie Berry), is brilliant in her own right but has dedicated much of her life to keeping their family and its image intact through a combination of charm and ironclad control. But the polished family image is starting to crack
Eldest son Junior (Sean Boyce Johnson), has just returned home after serving prison time for embezzling campaign funds during his career as a state senator. His wife, Morgan (Crystal Dickinson), is preparing to serve her own sentence tied to the same scandal.
At the center of it all is Naz (Matthew Elijah Webb), who serves as both narrator and reluctant participant, guiding the audience through the family's chaos while quietly struggling to figure out who he is beyond the expectations of the Jasper legacy. He was driven home by his friend Aziza (Andréa Agosto), who unintentionally walked straight into the Jasper family storm.
The ensemble is excellent across the board as this dysfunctional family. Womak plays Sonny with commanding intensity and utilizes a booming orator's voice to remind us that he was a fiery speaker to multitudes in the past. Johnson gives Junior a fragile bravado, fueled by the uncertainty of what the future holds, while Dickinson gives Morgan a biting bitterness that makes many of the play’s funniest lines hit even harder. Agosto brings warmth, humor, and energy to every scene, with a natural ability to land a joke without turning the character into comic relief.
Berry is wonderful as the power behind the throne, Claudine, and finds the balance between fierce control and genuine vulnerability, making her both intimidating and understandable.
As Naz, Webb is a standout performance - he’s awkward, funny, frustrating, and even when Naz makes selfish choices, Webb keeps the audience firmly connected to him. The play may be filled with larger-than-life personalities, but it’s Naz who grounds everything emotionally.
Directed by Delicia Turner Sonnenberg, the production balances comedy and emotional fallout beautifully. Even as secrets explode across the dinner table and years of resentment come bubbling to the surface, the play never loses its sense of humor or momentum. Sonnenberg keeps everything moving with a natural rhythm that allows the audience to laugh hard one moment, then quietly realize how much these characters are hurting the next.
The production itself looks gorgeous, thanks to Lawrence E. Moten III’s scenic design of a stately Chicago home complete with towering windows, snowy skies, polished wood floors, and the complementary lighting design by Sherrice Mojgani. The house feels elegantly warm and calm on the surface, even as emotional chaos tears through it, room by room.
“Purpose” is ambitious and layered, and at nearly three hours long, it explores a lot of emotional ground. Jacobs-Jenkins weaves together themes of identity, legacy, forgiveness, mental illness, and the crushing pressure of trying to live up to someone else’s idea of who you should be, all while balancing biting humor with genuine emotional weight.
How To Get Tickets
“Purpose” is playing at La Jolla Playhouse through June 7th. For ticket and showtime information, go to lajollaplayhouse.org
Photo Credit: (L-R) Stephanie Berry, Andréa Agosto, Cornell Womack, and Matthew Elijah Webb in La Jolla Playhouse’s production of PURPOSE; photo by Rich Soublet II.
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