Last season, the playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins achieved success at the Hayes Theater in the second stage through a “Tony Prize” occasion, which is its exit comedy, where the Arkansas family wanders on the farm on the farm. The group-which is a faintly illuminated palace, was destroyed both-both the material relationship of the family with its past, which has the slave and the American house, a place of good rot, slowly retreating to the wet scene.
Now Jacobs-Jenkins has returned to Hayes with “purpose”, another exciting battle Royale, where, again, intermittent family clashes over a long night in a luxurious house. Nevertheless, this interior design designed by the director of phylicia rashad, warm, welcome and bright, a wonderful orange room supported by a curved stairs. The artifacts of the black heritage are located everywhere. On the first floor, there is a mausoleum of Martin Luther King Junior-a picture with an open book under it-and at the second floor exhibition, we see ancient pictures of family arms, standing next to King’s.
The younger son of the family, Naz (John Michael Hill), is an ongoing and fun narrator: he spends a lot of play explaining the back story or, less useful, hinting to what will come. My father, the respectable priest Suleiman Jasper, “says, referring to the picture at the head of the stairs. “Some of you may be aware of it, some of you are not much – that’s good.” “I think this depends on how much you are interested in the movement of American civil rights,” he added. (Hill, which often implicates charismatic performance pages of food monologue, often to an excellent comic effect.)
The person who was supposed to know him in Suleiman (Harry Linux) is Reverend Jesse Jackson. When Naz’s friend, dear (Kara Young), gets Starstruck in a Solomon interview, she gives up seeing a poster for him in her childhood chapter, and she is full of liver with his candle (“Hope for Right!”), Ken close to “Keep Hope Alive”. However, Naz, who mixes his unilateral methods of his family, strongly hopes that dear mother of Adamin, Claudine (Latania Richardson Jackson), his famous father, or his older brother in the previous state, Jennour (Glenn Davis), recently being held to obtain the money of the displacement campaign. This last character borrows from Jesse Jackson, the son, who admitted to be guilty of fraud. His wife, here, Morgan (Alana Arenas), is also legal problem; Her anger betrays herself through wonderful small volcanic shepherds. Dinner, inevitably, unleashes a happy war for everyone against everyone.
In his work, Jacobs Jenkins plays steamer games. When it is in the experimental vein, it may fly in the literal sections of other artists: in his masterpiece, “October”, reformulate the Melodrama in the nineteenth century by Dion Posicolt and has a theatrical book character called BJJ, presents Tart’s comments. His plays in Broadway are the lowest postmodern, but there is still a mixture of effects below the surface. In “The purpose”, Suleiman shouts about the “truth” in the same way that Big Daddy does in “Cat on A Hot Tin Roof”, for example, and we record the echo. Jacobs-Jenkins integrates many Jackson-Family scandals, but it also wanders into “occasion” and the same fears: moral breakdown, heritage and race.
In “suitable”, we are supposed to judge the characters by their reaction to finding a book of photographs at home; In “The purpose”, the disputed book is a group of messages that Claudin wrote to beginners while he is in prison. He shocked his father by saying that he hoped to publish it – he is fine, that he is ready to exploit the family name to restore his career. Wherever it is “appropriate”, it explodes in Hell with Sikada, this play is exposed to references to a cell of the bees, which Solomon maintains. The purpose, for the younger generation, is an extension of the individual will-and next it is confusing-but the purpose of Solomon is the design of God, like the dance woven on the bees. “For the Lord of the hosts, and who bother him?” He asked Isaiah. The movement that Solomon expected to explode his children, so he looks at his family and is already bored.
Stephenwolf Theatre assigned Chicago Jacobs Jenkins to write “purpose” nine years ago. (Davis, one of the original inspiration of the theatrical writer, is now the company’s coach. The absolute ease of writing Jacobs Jenkins pushes the severe rush in the first chapter, but in the second half -balanced in style. The continuous direct addiction of Naz, and the various scripts of Gon Chekhov feels widespread.
Fortunately, the extended pregnancy also means that Rashad’s production comes to New York from Chicago with a lot of the wonderful Steppenwolf collection. (Just Young and Jackson are new additives.) Every actor gets AIA -like monologue, which casts the play rhythm, but at least each one is the Bavorra show. Perhaps this is the place where the true promise of “purpose” – in the idea that every member of the family (or movement) in some way can continue our attention, instead of our worship. A lot of precious energy is lost on building people in icons and tearing them. Can there be a form of recognition that avoid celebrities? Stephenwolf shows the road.
From the strange, there is a similar feeling of the band in the production of one amazing man “Vanya”, directed by Sam Yates and its adaptation by Simon Stephens from the play of Chekhov, which is now performed by the Irish actor Quicksilver Andrew Scott Download to Lortel. For about two hours, Scott-the “hot priest” from “Fleabag”, and Adam Magnetic Adam in “We are all strangers” Andrew Hai-on all parts of the Chekhov plot in sadness. Never change from a green silk shirt of caught and khaki pants, as it rings the depression of Jokester Vanya; He reduces his voice to the baritone to become a Vanie friend, the depressed depressed ecosystems Michael; He suffers from nervous playing with a golden series to play a married Helena, which was attracted to Michael. Hellina’s husband plays the joyful, Alexander, as he wanders around a scarf around his neck to perform a tour of the self -border.
But, then, all this is a tour. Here’s the perfect for Chekhov, which is played up to the smaller part by the best actor on the stage. Scott may be the best actor in his generation; It is definitely the finest Sonia – my brother Vania’s daughter, who absorbs her terrible disappointments with the daily saint – which I saw twenty years ago. Scott’s music is so accurate that I cannot describe it without thinking about formulating the singer, or kneeling the violin. He not only controls the voice Timbre, but also to other sub -letters, creating incredible tension in the room. You know how sometimes, as a violinist plays, you feel rosin against strings? It is like this.
On a night full of destroyed stop, Yates and designer Rosanna Vize, one of the four creators in the show, finds several ways to produce a shock feeling. (The characters are constantly faltering through an independent door to embarrassing situations.) The concept of display also laughs. At one point, Scott behaves lifting an excited dog who wants to reach its bowl. “where You He was? ”He just asked the dog he made through silent acting.
Everything, even the Chaplinesque Scott method between verbs, works in the basic service of Chekhov wisdom – that sadness is endless, but we can wear it lightly. In Stephen’s most intelligent touch, our understanding of a place of mine Vania changes, and puts him in his love for Hillina that is not available, but in the loss of his sister, Sonia’s late mother, represented by a piano on stage. Al -Jashtat therapist will tell us that in our dreams, all numbers are really aspects of ourselves. This “Vanya” is this type of dream, so we see Scott, a short duet with no one, in mourning for his sister’s life and life – and in fact, every life is present. ♦
