LANGUAGE IS "PURLIE VICTORIOUS"
Language is power.
The words kept resounding in my head as I alternately laughed and practically cried out (far, far, more of the former) at Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch, written by the great, late-actor Ossie Davis, and revived for the first time (the first damn time) since this brilliant satire’s Broadway debut back in 1961. (Purlie, the 1970 musical, aside.)
Language is power.
Purlie Victorious is permeated with the stomach-churning racist language of White Power; subjugating words that have shackled people of color in this country for centuries. The demeaning lexicon is spewed by the character Ol’Cap’n, who wields power in the waning days of segregation as a veritable plantation owner still, replete with bullwhip. The brute power of Ol’Cap’n’s utterances, their dominance and dominion, are on display in Purlie Victorious but their underlying cartoonishness, their garish ludicrousness, is exposed and lacerated. The words can never be funny but the shithead uttering them can, and does become funny, once denuded of power. And Ossie Davis, in this play, denudes the hell out of Ol’Cap’n.
Language is power.
The language of Blackness packs its own counter-power in Purlie Victorious; as it has throughout history. This language is both biblical and musical. It sings and soars, declaiming and ascending to a realm of freedom all its own. Every Black character in Purlie Victorious speaks this language to power, each with their own decisive spin. But the speaker of speakers is Purlie Victorious himself, the once-and-future preacher, hero of his own play, who spins biblical colloquies approaching free verse that undergird the elaborate contrivances of his plan to wrestle his old church back from the grasping Ol’Cap’n.
“And I commenced to ponder the meaning of this evil thing that groveled beneath my footstool—this no-good lump of nobody!—not fit to dwell on this earth beside the children of the blessed—an abomination to the Almighty and stench in the nostrils of his people! And yet—And yet—a man! A weak man; a scared man; a pitiful man; like the whole southland bogged down in sin and segregation crawling on his knees before my judgement seat—but still a MAN!”
Language is power.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., knew this better than all of us. Ossie Davis, who knew and loved King, in fact doubted the efficacy of his friend’s confirmed nonviolence but he admired King’s powerful words. Davis put a whole lot of Dr. King into Purlie. Unsurprisingly, the Purlie he paints is with affection. Purlie, in the end — words and all — wins the day.
This is a marvelously calibrated revival, with layered performances that subversively play off stereotypes long since banished from even Broadway stages. The direction, by Kenny Leon, feels sublimely light-handed, though its satirical rigor is ironclad. His players rock and roll but rarely over-step, in what is, at times, a near-murderous dance. The set, by Derek McClane, is a character unto itself, a woodframe shack that ultimately rises to heaven.
The principals all sizzle. It could not have been easy to inhabit these characters. Talk about catharsis. Every stereotype in Purlie Victorious revels in its own underlying truth before transcending it. The actors grapple with these stereotypes eloquently Heather Alicia Simms glows with warmth, and wariness, as Purlie’s sister-in-law, the stalwartly matriarchal “Missy Judson.” Billy Eugene Jones tiptoes through the Ol’ Cap’n’s tripwires with agonizing, Steppin’ Fetchit-like un-dignity, and the wiliness of a survivor, as “Gitlow Judson,” Purlie’s brother. Vanessa Bell Calloway is the quintessence of strength in servitude as Ol’ Cap’n’s ever-maternal, ever-agitating, menial — “Idella Land.” Noah Robbins is delectably anemic, yet anything but powerless as Charlie Cotchipee, the Ol’ Cap’n’s runt of a son with an unsuspected social conscience. Jay O. Sanders is the Ol’Cap’n hisself, all slapstick and snake venom.
Then there is Kara Young as Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins, the illiterate country girl who steals Purlie’s heart and absolutely every scene she appears in, delineating the character’s slow but triumphant evolution with a delirious physicality that Ms. Young uncorks like molasses; first sweet-dripping, then slathering.
The powerhouse star (and a co-producer) of Purlie Victorious is the incomparable Leslie Odom, Jr., who rings every linguistic high-note from the role, yet manages to embody Purlie Victorious Judson’s fierce will to power with a humanizing vulnerability. It is a role that Ossie Davis himself originated over 60 years ago alongside his wife, Ruby Dee, as Lutiebelle (with Alan Alda as Charlie).
Language is power, as Purlie Victorious never lets you forget. The show has just extended its limited run through February. Submit to it while you can.