Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch

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In 1961, Ossie Davis channeled the hurt of growing up in segregated Georgia into Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through The Cotton Patch, humorously attacking the cause of his suffering rather than giving into it. A Broadway revival of the play, the first since those heady days of the modern Civil Rights Movement, is a current reminder that it’s possible to smile through the pain. That it’s a needed one is the tragedy.

Davis portrayed the aspiring preacher, Purlie Victorious Judson, opposite his wife Ruby Dee as Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins, both in the original stage production and in a 1963 film adaptation (sometimes less merrily titled Gone Are the Days!). With limited options and limitless courage, Davis created plum parts for Dee and himself. That quality has endured over the decades, with the role of Purlie having now enticed Leslie Odom, Jr. back to Broadway after a seven-year post-Hamilton, post-Tony-winning absence, while Kara Young has made a much quicker return to the Times-Square limelight as Lutiebelle, offering definitive evidence that her outstanding performance in last season’s Cost of Living was just the tip of her acting talents.

The renowned generosity of Davis is present in his writing, too, assuring that Purlie Victorious is a lot more than the sum of its leads. A cleverly layered farce, the play lets its entire ensemble in on the no-holds-barred fun that treats racism with the ridicule it deserves. For Purlie, at least at the outset, that means cultivating a huckster’s agency within a brutal sharecropping system that, among its litany of outrages, has allowed Ol’ Cap’n Cotchipee (Jay O. Sanders), a buffoonish plantation owner who still exerts power through a decidedly non-buffoonish bullwhip, to intercept a $500 inheritance intended for Purlie’s deceased cousin Bee. With the ultimate goal of buying and restoring the town’s old church, Big Bethel, to serve an integrated congregation, Purlie schemes to get the money by taking advantage of the Ol’ Cap’n’s idiotic inability to tell Black people apart. With charm and good looks to spare, Purlie dazzles Lutiebelle, a wide-eyed “scullion” from Alabama, into impersonating deceased cousin Bee whose earthly advantages–nice clothes, a college education, and a loving family–have no connection to Lutiebelle’s forlorn understanding of the world.

In addition to Lutiebelle’s comical struggle to walk in high-heeled shoes, this experiential gap encourages Young to brilliantly infuse the character’s thoughts about Purlie with maximal aching desire, which is not only funny but also touching, because it’s suggestive of all the happiness Lutiebelle has been denied during her constrained life. That’s the delicate balance Davis strikes, along with director Kenny Leon, in blending the play’s joy and anguish in a way that does honor to them both. This remarkable empathy assumes more surprising dimensions when it’s extended to Gitlow Judson (Billy Eugene Jones), Purlie’s brother and Ol’ Cap’n Cotchipee’s reliably agreeable sounding board for all of his bigoted beliefs. Flipping caricature on its head, Gitlow’s obsequiousness is depicted as a strategic act of survival that makes Ol’ Cap’n Cotchipee his fool rather than the reverse. Though, when Gitlow does seemingly forget the ruse to bask in Ol’ Cap’n Cotchipee’s favoritism, his devoted wife Missy (Heather Alicia Simms) is there to set things right again with a few smacks.

Still, Missy’s walloping interventions are mostly unnecessary, as Jones subtly conveys that, by and large, Gitlow knows the soul-crushing cost of going along to get along. The doltish fallacies of the Lost Cause aren’t just absurd; they’re also the dispiriting reality Gitlow believes he can’t escape, so he heartbreakingly compromises himself out of existence. Deceptions may abound in Purlie Victorious, but only one is ruinous and obscene.

If there’s unwavering authenticity to be found in Purlie Victorious, it’s in the relationship between Charlie Cotchipee (Noah Robbins), Ol’ Cap’n’s integration-minded son, and Idella Landy (Vanessa Bell Calloway), Ol’ Cap’n’s housekeeper who stepped in to supply Charlie’s good sense after his mother passed away. Charlie and Idella exist to fill gaps, convincingly in each other’s lives and less so in the play’s storyline. It’s fine, however, if Davis contrives to push us toward the ending a bit, since all great plays are a little messy and Purlie’s culminating homily, especially as warmly voiced by the inspired Odom, Jr., is well worth the shove.

The same year Purlie Victorious graced the big screen, Dee had a supporting role in the cinematic version of Jean Genet’s The Balcony, the French playwright’s own satiric drubbing of an unjust society ruled by contemptibly clownish elites. But, whereas Genet saw a ceaseless need within humanity to replicate its cruel role-playing, particularly from those sanctimonious enough to don a mitre and vestments, Davis leaves the audience with an optimistic call for spiritual togetherness, one that scenic designer Derek McLane audaciously visualizes from the rafters. Even if, as with Genet, the heavens hold no sway for you, Davis still makes a strong argument for finding radical hope in one another.

Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch (extended through February 4. 2024)

Music Box Theatre, 239 West 45th Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, call 212-239-6200 or visit http://www.purlievictorious.com

Running time: one hour and 50 minutes with no intermission