PURPOSE

By Diana Simmonds

February 7 2026

PURPOSE, Wharf 1, Sydney Theatre Company, 5 February-22 March 2026. Photography by Prudence Upton

Purpose, the major award winner of Broadway 2025 (Tony, Pulitzer, etc), is a rich family dramedy from Steppenwolf, the company also responsible for the rich, family tragicomedy, August, Osage County. Whereas Tracey Letts’ 2007 play focused on a white middling-class Southern family, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Jasper family is Black upper-middle-class Chicago.

There are echoes of the Rev Jesse Jackson in the fame, adulation and hiccups that befall the Jaspers, whose patriarch, Rev Solomon Jasper (Markus Hamilton), charismatic preacher and one-time civil rights leader, is now retired to beekeeping and sullen silences. Another echo, says the playwright, is the influence on him of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin In The Sun (STC production: 2022).

Of the play, Jacobs-Jenkins has said how he sees the earlier patriarch working himself to death, while a generation on, Solomon can move beyond and rise. And also, “another thing I love about that play is the women and how those three female characters are a triangulation of three kinds of femininity in that era.” He has created a similar structure in Purpose with Jasper matriarch Claudine (Deni Gordon), daughter-in-law Morgan (Grace Bentley-Tsibuah) and unexpected dinner guest Aziza (Sisi Stringer).

Completing the family is eldest son and former political high-flyer Solomon Jr, known as Junior (Maurice Marvel Meredith). And, leading the narrative through his chatty relationship with the audience, is younger son Nazareth “Naz” (Tinashe Mangwana). Both have disappointed their father. Ironically, he’s more vexed with Naz for dropping out of divinity school than he is with Junior, just out of prison post-embezzlement.

The labyrinthine strands of Purpose are teased out by Naz’s frequent interventions and illuminated by Kelsey Lee’s lighting states. These flood and retreat from parts of the stage and the actors to clarify and steer. It’s subtle and effective. The same can be said of James Peter Brown’s fragmentary jazz-inflected soundscape.

Naz arrives home with bestie Aziza, who’s given him a ride in gratitude for agreeing to be her sperm donor. The occasion is Claudine’s command to celebrate Junior’s release from prison. When she spots Aziza, her “girlfriend for Naz” detector starts beeping, and Aziza’s plan to turn right around and drive back to New York is thwarted, not least because of the snow, prettily falling beyond the dining room windows.

The celebration dinner is the centrepiece of the play’s three hours, including interval (don’t blanch: they zoom by, so enthralling, funny, and gasp-worthy is the play). And of course, it’s the catalyst for all kinds of mayhem, during which each actor gets to bathe in the luxury of a meaningful monologue. And Grace Bentley-Tsibuah’s Morgan makes several entrances and exits, as scintillating as an enraged Beyonçe.

Opposing her is Deni Gordon’s imperiously steely matriarch. Jacobs-Jenkins’ characters aren’t one-dimensional; however, Claudine is also a slithery manipulator, while Morgan’s arc takes her from pouting trophy wife to unmasked avenger. Her one-time senator husband is, in Maurice Marvel Meredith’s hands, another whose metamorphosis is fascinating: from winner to loser and then to somewhere even more barren.

Reluctantly drawn in and paralysed by what goes down, Sisi Stringer as Aziza is a wide-eyed optimist whose motives and ideas are ditzily of this moment. Saying little while making many opinions known, Markus Hamilton’s Rev Jasper is a languid streak of misanthropy. He often sits opposite a portrait of Dr Martin Luther King, and the contrast is blinding.

Corralling all elements from go to woe, and in a class of his own as Naz, Tinashe Mangwana is a revelation. WAAPA graduate and Old Fitz alumnus, he walks a high wire between comedy and innocence, boyishness and maturity. Fabulous.

Propelling the company through the weekend from hell, director Zindzi Okenyo does a remarkable job with a complex and demanding piece. However, her relative inexperience as a director shows in occasional misplacements of actors and conversely: tennis match, cross-stage exchanges; the dinner party too needs its chairs directed into a zig-zag so Morgan, in particular, isn’t hidden.

For Sydney audiences of any skin tone, there is much to be savoured in this production. Designer Jeremy Allen gives a nod to TV’s Huxtable family in the set. Unfortunately, Bill Cosby’s tainted reputation has overshadowed the importance of his eponymous sitcom to African-American artists. For the first time in mainstream entertainment, their paintings were displayed in the Huxtable home. Similarly, Allen has decorated the Jaspers’ gracious parlour with African sculptures and a typical “urban black life” painting by distinguished Black Bostonian, Allan Rohan Crite. Such detailing makes an even richer experience.

Purpose is a thrilling way for Mitchell Butel to begin his artistic directorship, and this production is a Must See.