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Broadway’s Purlie Victorious Rises Up and Shines Hilariously

Kara Young, Heather Alicia Simms, Leslie Odom, Jr., Vanessa Bell Calloway, Billy Eugene Jones, and Noah Robbins in PURLIE VICTORIOUS – Photo by Marc J. Franklin.

The Broadway Theatre Review: Ossie Davis’s Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch

By Ross

Dressing from a rack center stage, the cast of the impeccably done Broadway revival of Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch sets the Music Box stage dutifully and efficiently for its grand return. And although no one is home, it seems, for his arrival, this play, which started as a drama over sixty years ago, has become a beacon of hilarity and meaning, all to the sounds of a banjo playing the cast forward. Written with a spark by the late Ossie Davis (I’m Not Rappaport), a man as prolific as he is legendary as an actor, writer, and director, this current comedic re-creation, as directed with a sure-footedness by Kenny Leon (Broadway’s Topdog/Underdog), finds its lopsided stance is its rage as much as its hope. Having not been performed on Broadway since its original 1961-62 run, Purlie Victorious – not to be confused with the musical 1970 version, Purlie, a show I knew nothing about – binds itself around a preacher man determined, through a wild scheme, to claim an inheritance that he feels he and his community deserve, so that he may save his hometown church, and himself in the process.

As played with a wild determination by a very able Leslie Odom, Jr. (Broadway’s Hamilton), Purlie Victorious flows fast and furiously funny forward. He fills the space with his bold confidence and verve, delivering a performance that feels full, even if a bit one-note. But the true standout in this wildly fun production is the phenomenally gifted Kara Young (MTC’s Cost of Living) as the game and gutsy Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins. She steals everything away from everything else, taking over our senses with a quick hilarious twist of the ankle. Or so it would seem. Together the two hypnotize, and under Purlie’s tutelage and direction, we watch the pair plot to pass off the pretty Lutiebelle, who is completely smitten under the Purlie-spell, as his Cousin Bee who has an old claim to a $500 inheritance from the ironically named, “great white father of the year”, Ol’ Cap’n Cotchipee, dutifully portrayed with vinegar by Jay O. Sanders (Broadway’s Girl From the North Country). Battered and feathered in lingering racism, the laughs fly strong, while the heart of the matter hits slyly and with the great aim and sting of a whip. 

Leslie Odom, Jr. and Kara Young in PURLIE VICTORIOUS – Photo by Marc J. Franklin.

Purlie, and his crew of family and friends; Idella Landy, played wonderfully by Vanessa Bell Calloway (Broadway’s Dreamgirls), Purlie’s brother, Gitlow Jodson, played powerfully by Billy Eugene Jones (Broadway’s Fat Ham), and Gitlow’s wife, Missy Judson, played to perfection by Heather Alicia Simms (TFANA’s Fairview), understand the difficulties that lay ahead. Cotchipee, who still lives and rules his roost as if nothing really has changed in the last fifty years, continues to keep a number of Black folks living under his financial thumb, thanks to a never-ending debt brigade, and he won’t part with that money easily.  No matter what his more liberal son, Charlie Cotchipee, wonderfully portrayed by Noah Robbins (Rattlestick’s Lewiston/Clarkston) believes and repeatedly says. So the plan of trickery is the best they have, and with the hilarious enlistment of Lutiebelle putting on his cousin’s college-educated airs and her big city shoes, they try with all their might to pull this thing off. Believing that it might just work, for the simple fact that, to be frank, Purtue understands and knows an old racist truth; that Cotchipee sees all Black faces as lesser and basically just the same. He only sees the face of a slave, and nothing more. 

“Being colored can be a lot of fun when there ain’t nobody looking.” And inside this play by Davis, the undercurrent of truth and humor never fails to deliver. Line after brilliantly nuanced line, this magnificently well-played production unwraps the darkness of form with a fevered frivolity inside the funny. Condensed from three acts into a sharply defined 105min, the cast, on a glorious designed set by Derek McLane (Broadway’s Moulin Rouge!), with focused lighting by Adam Honoré (Broadway’s Ain’t No Mo’), a solid sound design by Peter Fitzgerald (Broadway’s KPOP), original music by Guy Davis (Sugarbelly & Other Tales…), and some fantastic costumes by Emilio Sosa (Broadway’s Good Night, Oscar), finds glory and honor inside all those laughs lifted directly out of the righteousness. This joy is especially true with Gitlow’s “best pretending” contortions that please us as much as they please (and skewers) the Ol’ Cap’n Cotchipee. 

Heather Alicia Simms and Billy Eugene Jones in PURLIE VICTORIOUS – Photo by Marc J. Franklin.

Beyond Young’s meticulously well-constructed Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins evading the likes of Cotchipee, The Deputy (Noah Pyzik), and The Sheriff (Bill Timoney), the writing and the formulation are what carries the piece forward. The preacher does preach, and sometimes, mainly because of that one-note problem, the words in those moments start to dull themselves into a drone, carrying a burden too great for any actor or creator to carry. The levels of required engagement and messaging leave the main character’s speeches lost in a fog, with too many questions to answer about his reasoning and his rationale. But the overall effect works its way forward, in somewhat of a miraculous manner. Delivering laughs with a point, The play is as relevant not as ever, feeling ever so modern in its messaging and its design. It will entertain and amaze, giving laughs in place of drama, without ever losing the point.

Jay O. Sanders, Billy Eugene Jones, Kara Young, and Leslie Odom, Jr in PURLIE VICTORIOUS – Photo by Marc J. Franklin.

26 comments

  12. […] A sigh and a song are what draw us into Roundabout Theatre Company‘s emotionally engaging and tenderly produced revival of Home, forty-four years after this deliberate play, written by Samm-Art Williams (The Montford Point Marine), first opened in a Tony-nominated production on Broadway. With blisters on his feet and the sun burning down their backside, the central figure of Williams’ signature play gets a-rocking and a reminiscing, taking us through a powerful depiction of an ordinary Black man’s life in the rural lands of Jim Crow’s South. Sadly, Williams, at the age of 78, died peacefully in North Carolina weeks before this stellar production opened on Broadway. But he would have been proud of this top-notch production, directed with a fast-talking spirit by Kenny Leon (Broadway’s Purlie Victorious). […]

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