Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Purpose, winner of the 2025 Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize, comes to the Royal Court in Steppenwolf’s production, directed by Phylicia Rashad.
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Purpose, winner of the 2025 Tony Award for Best Play, opens at the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square on Saturday 16 January 2027. It also won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and Phylicia Rashad directs its European premiere.
The Steppenwolf Theatre Company first staged the play in Chicago in its 2023 to 2024 season. It moved to Broadway’s Hayes Theater the following season, and five of its six actors were nominated for Tony Awards.
The play follows the Jaspers, a Black political dynasty in Chicago of civil rights leaders, pastors and congressmen. A snowstorm traps three generations under one roof on the night of a family birthday, and the secrets come out.
London sees the Steppenwolf production as it played on Broadway, in the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs. The run closes on Saturday 27 February 2027.
Five of the original Broadway company cross with it: Alana Arenas, Glenn Davis, Jon Michael Hill, Harry Lennix of Justice League, and LaTanya Richardson Jackson of To Kill a Mockingbird. Kalyne Coleman, seen in Interview with the Vampire, joins them. Rashad is known on screen for Grey’s Anatomy.