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Chicago Tribune
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Steppenwolf Theatre play ‘Purpose' wins the Pulitzer Prize for drama
'Purpose,' a play by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins that was commissioned by Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company, has won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for drama, the Pulitzer board announced Monday. The fictional work debuted in Chicago in 2024 and moved earlier this year from Steppenwolf to Broadway, where it currently plays with most of its original Chicago cast. Directed in New York and Chicago by Phylicia Rashad, it's loosely based on the family of civil rights leader Jesse Jackson. This marks the first time a play first seen at Steppenwolf has won the prestigious prize since Tracy Letts' 'August: Osage County' in 2008. In a joint statement to the Tribune, Steppenwolf artistic directors Glenn Davis and Audrey Francis said that the 'Purpose' win 'underscores our company's time-honored commitment to developing ensemble-driven, new works.' The play was also nominated for a Tony Award last week, along with several members of its cast. The 2025 winners of the Pulitzer Prizes, presented annually by Columbia University, include nine winners across eight arts categories for books, drama and music. Awards for journalism were also announced Monday. 'James,' by the novelist Percival Everett, won for fiction. The book, which previously won the Kirkus Prize and a National Book Award and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, used Mark Twain's 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' as its starting point, reworking the story from the perspective of Jim, now James, Twain's escaped slave. It was a risky kind of bestseller from a longtime author and professor of English at the University of Southern California, whose previous breakthrough 2001 novel 'Erasure' was later adapted as the Oscar-nominated movie 'American Fiction.' Critics felt Everett more than lived up to his source, both honoring Twain and deepening the 1885 original. Everett told the Tribune last year, 'I think people assume because I am revisiting Twain, I am correcting. I love Twain's novel. It doesn't arise from dissatisfaction. if anything, I am flattering myself thinking I am in conversation with Twain.' Chris Jones is a Tribune critic. Tribune writer Christopher Borrelli contributed to this report. 2025 Pulitzer Prize winners in the arts FICTION: 'James' by Percival Everett (Doubleday) DRAMA: 'Purpose' by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins HISTORY: 'Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War' by Edda L. Fields-Black (Oxford University Press) 'Native Nations: A Millennium in North America' by Kathleen DuVal (Random House) BIOGRAPHY: 'John Lewis: A Life' by David Greenberg (Simon & Schuster) MEMOIR: 'Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir, by Tessa Hulls (MCD) POETRY: 'New and Selected Poems' by Marie Howe (W.W. Norton & Company) GENERAL NONFICTION: 'To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement' by Benjamin Nathans (Princeton University Press)
Chicago Tribune
18-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: Steppenwolf's ‘Purpose' has moved to Broadway, all Chicago guns blazing
NEW YORK — Nobody but Branden Jacobs-Jenkins could have written Steppenwolf Theatre's blistering play 'Purpose,' now reintroducing Chicago's most famous theater to Broadway. No one else would have had the chutzpah or the clout to so eviscerate a powerful, theocratic Black family and, in so doing, to chart the price that political parents invariably extract from their kids, children who did not sign up for any kind of campaign and to whom no benefits accrue. Just pressure and angst from listening to a lifetime of moralization and pontification and hypocrisy. Commissioned by Steppenwolf, where it premiered last year, 'Purpose' could reasonably be described as a Black version of the Steppenwolf play 'August: Osage County' (or the Black version of that famous Italian dinner scene in the Chicago-set TV show 'The Bear.') Directed in New York and Chicago by Phylicia Rashad, 'Purpose' is all the more powerful for its sly, barely fictionalized references to a specific family, that of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, whose son, former congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., was busted in 2013 for violating federal campaign law by using campaign funds to make personal purchases and sent to jail. His wife (now ex-wife) Sandi Jackson was sent to jail, too, on the inarguably flimsy grounds of jointly filing a fraudulent tax return. In a novel concession to the couple having young children, a judge allowed the two to serve their sentences sequentially. To be clear, 'Purpose' is about a fictional family named the Jaspers (LOL), but it takes place just as 'Junior' Jasper (Steppenwolf co-artistic director Glenn Davis) has gotten out of jail and wife Morgan (Alana Arenas) is about to enter federal prison. In the Broadway version of the script, some of the juicier Jacksonian references are less evident than was the case in Chicago, but there's still little doubt where Jacobs-Jenkins got the idea. 'Purpose' becomes another entry in Steppenwolf's long ledger of potent plays wherein damaged young storytellers, trying to find the point of their own lives, take their revenge against self-absorbed, transactional baby boomers, all bull, blather and blarney. And the piece is acted in this Broadway transfer with all ensemble guns blazing, replete with deeply immersive performances from Latanya Richardson Jackson (who is new to the show), Harry Lennix, Kara Young (also new) and, playing the authorial alter ego, the Steppenwolf ensemble member Jon Michael Hill. Anyone who has real-life experience with such a circle-the-wagons family will tell you that it's the outsiders drawn in by marriage who have the hardest time. So it's apt that the breakout performance here comes from Arenas, the longtime Steppenwolf ensemble member who is on fire from the moment she walks out on the stage of the Hayes Theater, her character so infuriated by the actions of her husband, and so aware of what familial forces made him this way, she can barely contain the roar of her sardonic rage. This is one of those tours de force where the audience collectively leans forward the second she enters Todd Rosenthal's re-creation of a big house on Chicago's South Side with portraits of civil rights icons like Martin Luther King, Jr. on the walls, men who also once walked its halls. Hill's Naz Jasper, like Tom in Tennessee Williams' 'The Glass Menagerie,' talks directly to the audience as he returns to his family homestead with his friend Aziza (the live-wire Young), to whom he has donated his sperm, an action he knows his parents are destined not to understand. At first, Aziza is star-struck by being in the home of a civil rights icon, but over dinner she sees that Solomon Jasper (Lennix) has been a better marcher for social justice than a parent and husband, and that his wife, Claudine (Richardson Jackson) has learned that her job is to clear up the mess with nondisclosures and the like. 1 of Jon Michael Hill (as Naz), Kara Young (Aziza), and Harry Lennix (Solomon) in "Purpose" on Broadway at the Hayes Theater in New York. (Marc J. Franklin) Hill is a deeply empathetic actor and his character pulls the audience through this story by the hand, revealing a now-struggling Solomon and an unstable family trapped in the deepest form of denial. Jacobs-Jenkins has penned Naz as an asexual introvert, the kind of young man who finds solace in nature and lakes and everything that takes him far away from either his father's infidelity or the glare of political attention. It's a remarkably moving character, likely all too familiar to all scions of big personalities with even bigger flaws. And it's rendered beautifully by one of Steppenwolf's young stars. 'Purpose' runs out of steam a little late in the second act, where Lennix could, to my mind, fight with yet more force as Solomon makes his generation's case to his needy younger son, insisting on his continuing relevance even as the world spirals away. But that's a minor quibble, given Lennix's overall sad gravitas, the power of this ensemble acting, the merciless direction throughout and the fantastic way Jacobs-Jenkins goes back and forth between his characters' anger and vulnerability, making the case for everyone and undermining all their arguments at the same time. In the end, 'Purpose' is a major new American play about what it's like to be trapped by powerful parents whose public personas their children can easily see through, even as they are condemned to try and live up to their import. A thumping blend of tragic-proximate horror and schadenfreude, it's riveting to watch.
The Guardian
16-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Actor Julianne Nicholson: ‘I would have loved to have been a nepo baby but alas'
Julianne Nicholson, 53, was born near Boston, Massachusetts, and worked as a model before training as an actor in New York. Her screen credits include August: Osage County, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Ally McBeal, I, Tonya and Boardwalk Empire. In 2021, she won an Emmy for her role as Lori in Mare Of Easttown. She recently played Samantha 'Sinatra' Redmond in Disney+ political thriller Paradise and is now starring as nightclub owner Kate Galloway in BBC One's period drama Dope Girls. Nicholson recently moved to the UK with her husband, British actor Jonathan Cake, and their two children. Your Dope Girls character is loosely based on real-life roaring 20s nightclub owner Kate 'Ma' Meyrick. What drew you to the role?The story is such a fascinating look at that period. Normally when we see the post-first world war years on screen, the men are returning home, the women are ecstatic and life moves forward. It wasn't quite as straightforward as that. Women had taken control in the men's absence. Now they had to readjust or rebel. And I loved playing a gang boss. Who wouldn't? Did you have your own clubbing days?I sure did. I moved to New York City in 1990 when I was 18. From age 18 to 24, I will admit there were some clubs. New York in the 90s was amazing. I have such fond memories of that time, especially because I got through it! Going out dancing still appeals but now I might have to find one of these daytime raves I keep hearing about. There's a scene in Dope Girls where you're stuck in a box with a rat. How did shooting that go? Surprising. The idea of rats disgusts me but I met the one we were using beforehand. Her name was Sniffs and she was adorable. She didn't feel like a rat to me, she felt like sweet little Sniffs. She scampered up and down me. I have a great pic of her standing up on her hind legs on my back. Maybe I should add 'rats' to the special skills section of my résumé. We're midway through the series on BBC One. What we can look forward to? Kate gets even naughtier. She's eventually nicknamed the Queen of Soho, which is cool. I should go to modern-day Soho and announce myself. Just show up outside the velvet rope and demand to be let in. What's it like doing sex scenes nowadays, compared with earlier in your career?Easier. Intimacy coordinators make everything clear and comfortable. A lot of times when you're watching sex scenes, it feels like people are acting it. It's fun to bring it alive and make it feel real, rather than an idea of what's pretty and sexy. I was also relieved that for both my sexy scenes in Dope Girls, I didn't have to actually kiss anyone. I'm not being precious or prudish, I'm just not into that. It feels more intimate somehow. Dope Girls was your first job since moving to the UK. How are you finding it here?We were previously in California, which was a wonderful place to bring up young children, but the threat of fire was becoming more regular. We were evacuating annually. We've moved to the Hampshire countryside. I cook on an Aga. People ride horses past our window. The daffodils are beautiful but your weather is so intense. You Brits talk about it all the time because it would weigh you down if you didn't. Are you relieved to be out of America since the change in government? There is a sense of relief. We're not having to deal with the daily oppression of the news and what the current administration are doing. It's suffocating when you're there. You can't look away. During the first Trump presidency, people who didn't vote for him functioned in a state of shock and trauma for the whole four years. It's worse now. I feel sad for the country. All that division. Paradise portrays an impending environmental catastrophe and your character is a powerful tech billionaire with influence over the US president. Was that accidentally timely? I'm sure that's part of the show's success. It's really entertaining and grabbing in its own right, but the state of the world adds a little extra frisson. It resonates with people in a different way right now. Did Kate Winslet really have to talk you into taking the part of her best friend in Mare of Easttown? I read the first few episodes and said, 'Nah, the priest did it'. But Kate assured me that the last episode would be amazing. I trusted her and she was right. At times I wondered if I was the killer, which annoyed me no end. I was like, 'If I have fucking signed on to a show where I murder my husband's young girlfriend, I'm going to be mad!' Luckily I had nothing to worry about. Do people think you're related to Jack Nicholson? They did when I was younger. I used to say that if I was, you would have heard about me a long time ago. I would've loved to have been a nepo baby but alas. Are good roles for midlife women still rare? I'm not finding that but I'm very much in the minority. Ageing is different for men. There's a different standard in terms of … well, everything. I'm lucky to be getting more interesting roles as I go but they're definitely few and far between. There are examples out there – look at Jean Smart or Allison Janney – but it's not the norm, sadly. What projects are in the pipeline ? A new thriller called The Amateur with Rami Malek. He's hugely talented. I'm hoping to go and see him in Oedipus at the Old Vic before it closes. I also did three episodes on the new season of Hacks. I can't tell you who I play but it's unlike anything I've done before. I go through a real transformation. Very physical, very outrageous. Dope Girls is showing on BBC One and is available on iPlayer. Paradise is available on Disney+
