‘This Is a Work That Tells a Scary Amount of Truth’: Leslie Odom Jr. and Kara Young on Their Roaring New Revival of Purlie Victorious
Last night at the Music Box Theatre, the preacher Purlie Victorious went back to Georgia to liberate his people, as Ossie Davis’s play Purlie Victorious returned to Broadway for the first time since its 1961 debut. Through farce and righteous fire, this “Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch” follows the wily son of a sharecropping family as he plots to claim his dead cousin’s inheritance from a racist plantation owner. Originally starring Davis and his wife (and fellow civil rights activist), Ruby Dee, this jewel of a revival now features Leslie Odom Jr. in the title role, with Kara Young (Clyde’s, Cost of Living) as Lutiebelle, the innocent roped into his scheme.
Director Kenny Leon was proud, urgent, and emotional in his curtain call speech: “I watched so many African American artists walk the red carpet today—Laurence Fishburne, Samuel L. Jackson—and I thought, artists have been fighting for this for years. Woodie King Jr. is here! We’ve been fighting, fighting, fighting, and we just want to love. Maybe the answers won’t come from the political community or the spiritual community, but maybe it’ll come from artists.”
A week before Young donned a kaleidoscopic opening night dress printed with Dee’s portrait (the handiwork of Young’s own aunt, Martha Jenkins, a seamstress), and the likes of Spike Lee, LaChanze, and Reverend Al Sharpton applauded alongside Melba Moore, who won a Tony for her whistle-toned take on Lutiebelle in the work’s 1970 musical adaptation, Purlie, Vogue caught up with the two artists leading this production as they prepared for a Wednesday matinee.
The vibe in Odom’s sumptuously appointed dressing room (“I always want it to feel luxe, comfy, and welcoming”) was more blissed-out-speakeasy than you’d expect from an actor rearing to take the stage in a razor-sharp satire of American racist capitalism; music was playing, and a bottle of Suntory Roku sat atop a glistening bar cart. But with Young seated comfortably beneath a painting by Leonard Maiden, Three Young Men in Suits, it seemed fitting that the stars should be at ease—both in their preparation and, now, their success. Odom has a hit in his hands, and Young was described in Leon’s speech as “Diahann Carroll mixed in with Lucille Ball and Eartha Kitt.”
Odom had spent years trying to get a revival of Purlie Victorious off the ground—his first show as both actor and producer—with an opportunity almost materializing last year through Roundabout Theater Company. But, gesturing towards Young, who was not available at the time, he tells us that he has no qualms about the way things finally came together.
Vogue: You’re best known onstage for your Tony-winning role in Hamilton. Did you ever consider reviving Purlie, the musical, instead?
Leslie Odom Jr.: Of course I did. But it was very important for Ossie and Ruby’s three children, who make up their estate—Nora, Hasna, and Guy—that the return of this great work happen the way it did originally: the play was first, their father’s words were first. Guy, though, has written the original music for this production, which is so special.
The piece was written during such a specific moment in American playwriting, where the things artists wanted to say were addressed directly. You two have to go through that, but also find your way into the satire—how are you tapping into that hybrid energy?
Kara Young: The absurdity of it is very clear. I always think of the part where [plantation owner] Ol’ Cap’n tells one of his workers, “Get out of here! And save me some buttermilk…” We need each other so much, as humans, and I think that’s the deep message of the play. There’s something about the way Ossie writes, that’s where the magic of his satire comes in, through the absurdity.
He and Ruby were so politically involved, they were absorbing their current circumstances and it feels as if they wanted this play to be a force of change. Doing it now, after the last eight years of our political history, and with books being burned and history silenced—what better time to look at our history for what it was, what it is, and what our future can be?
Odom: It’s almost, like, come see Purlie Victorious while you can, because this is a work that tells a scary amount of truth. Davis tells it with such generosity and joy, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it on some banned book list.
Do you think there’s a certain directness in Purlie Victorious that’s missing in newer works?
Odom: I can’t criticize new works, but I believe that, because of what we’ve lived through, there is quite possibly a liberation we’re experiencing. We all had a near-death experience with COVID, even if in our own minds. To be back in a theater, after having witnessed a lynching on our phones—you know, Mr. Floyd, all these things—we’re never going to be the same. There is an immediacy and urgency that we are taking to the stage every night, and y’all are bringing to your seats. I believe we’re creating something together that didn’t exist, even in ‘61. Something that’s for us.