[MUSIC - Luscious Jackson: Citysong]

Kousha Navidar: You're listening to WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar, in for Alison Stewart. We continue our show celebrating Tony nominees with a conversation with the Broadway revival of Ossie Davis's play, Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch. Leslie Odom, Jr. takes on the title role of the fast-talking preacher whose definition of truth is a bit elastic, but for a good cause. He wants to build a proper church with some money that was left to a family member, but that family member died.

He ropes in an unsuspecting, wide-eyed, young lady, Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins, to impersonate the dead woman. Played by Kara Young, the naive Lutiebelle has to convince the plantation owner, who is holding the money, to fork over the cash, and things do not go as planned. This show is a farcical satire about some serious subjects, self-determination, civil rights, and just doing the right thing.

Purlie Victorious is nominated in six Tony Award categories, including Best Lead Actor in a Play for Leslie Odom Jr.'s role as Purlie Victorious, Best Featured Actress for Kara Young as Lutiebelle, and Best Direction for Director Kenny Leon, all three of whom joined Alison on All Of It back in October to talk about the play. She started by asking Director Kenny Leon how the script held up across the six decades since it was last produced, and what had to be reinterpreted.

Kenny Leon: [laughs] Interestingly enough, it's very relevant 62, 63 years later. It's like Ossie Davis Jr-- Ossie Davis Jr? No. Leslie Odom Jr.

[laughter]

Kenny Leon: Ossie Davis wrote a love letter to us in the future. He wrote a love letter to us reminding us what keeps our democracy strong, what keeps our democracy beautiful. He was telling us in 1961, that you have to lean into love. You have to lean into respect of all culture and all differences. If we don't do that, we're in trouble. In that sense, sadly, things that were true in 1961 are even more true today.

Alison Stewart: Leslie, what is important to Purlie Victorious Judson when we first meet him upon his return to his hometown?

Leslie Odom Jr.: I wrote on the front of my script, because that's always-- I find as an actor, if I can really understand what I come into an evening wanting, what it is I desire with my whole heart, I can simplify the proceedings for myself in that way. I could just go after one thing with everything inside of me. Purlie, quite frankly, he wants his $500 inheritance. He wants $500 because to him, he says to a character early in the piece, "Freedom, Missy, that's what Big Bethel means, and we can buy it back for $500, you want it or don't." It's simple. He wants $500. He wants freedom.

In that way, Mr. Davis-- It's really such a perfectly constructed piece, an evening in the theater. That way, it's so relatable. People really don't have-- We found with these audiences that we've discovered, there's just no barrier to entry. It's just so simple.

Alison Stewart: What does Lutiebelle want, Kara, when we first meet her?

Kara Young: I think we're first meeting a woman who has taken a chance in their life and is going to go with this man to help assist in this inheritance and help assist in getting back this church. I feel like we need a person who is at the apex of all of their desires and wants. They want a husband. They want a family. Lutiebelle wants truly a family, and she's met with the greatest gift of all. She gets Missy and Gitlow [chuckles] and she has this Black family that she's never had before. I feel like she keeps on getting all of the things that she desires as the play goes on, but obviously it's met with some twists and turns along the way. [chuckles]

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to a clip of the moment when Purlie and Lutiebelle returned to the home he grew up in. This is from Purlie Victorious.

Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins: This is the house where you was born and bred at.

Purlie Victorious Judson: Yes, better than being born outdoors.

Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins: What a lovely background for your home life.

Purlie Victorious Judson: I wouldn't give it to my dog to raise fleas in.

Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins: So clean and nice and warm-hearted.

Purlie Victorious Judson: First chance I get, I'ma burn the damn thing down.

[laughter]

Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins: But Reverend Purlie, it's yours, and that's what counts. Like Miz Emmylou says.

Purlie Victorious Judson: Come here. You see that big white house perched on top of that hill with them two windows looking right down at us like two eyeballs?

Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins: Uh-huh.

Purlie Victorious Judson: That's where Old Captain lives.

Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins: Old Captain?

Purlie Victorious Judson: Stonewall Jackson Cotchipee, he owns this dump, not me.

Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins: Oh.

Purlie Victorious Judson: That ain't all. Hill and dale, field and farm, truck and tractor, horse and mule, bird and bee and bush and tree and cotton. Cotton by the bowl and by the bale. Every bit of cotton you see in this county. Everything and everybody he owns.

Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins: Everybody? You mean he owns people?

Purlie Victorious Judson: Well, look, ain't a man, woman, or child working in this valley working in this valley ain't in debt to that old bastard. Busted. Buzzard.

[laughter]

Purlie Victorious Judson: That includes Gitlow and Missy. Everybody except me.

Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins: Folks can't own people no more, Reverend Purlie. Miz Emmylou says .

Purlie Victorious Judson: You ain't working for Miz Emmylou no more. You're working for me, Purlie Victorious. Freedom is my business. I say that old man runs this plantation on debt. The longer you work for Old Captain Cotchipee, the more you owe at the commissary. If you don't pay up, you can't leave. [chuckles] I don't give a damn what Miz Emmylou nor nobody else says. That's slavery.

Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins: I'm sorry, Reverend Purlie.

Purlie Victorious Judson: Don't apologize. Wait. Wait till I get my church. Wait till I buy Big Bethel back. Wait till I stand once again in the pulpit of Grandpa Kincaid, call upon my people and talk to my people about Old Captain, that miserable son of a--

Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins: Wait!

Purlie Victorious Judson: Wait, I say. We'll see who's going to dominize this valley. Him or me.

Alison Stewart: Leslie, how does your training as a vocalist help you with that text?

Leslie Odom Jr.: You kidding me? I'm using everything that I've got.

[laughter]

Leslie Odom Jr.: I got to use every part of my-- That's why it's really a great gift when a writer like Mr. Davis sets down to write a role like Purrlie Victorious, because it requires all of the training I had in text work, analyzing text, all of my Shakespeare training. You're dealing with that kind of language, that size. I remember we worked on the Greeks. There was a whole junior year in college, you just work on that Greek text because you're dealing with that big emotion, Medea, and what else, and Antigone, and all that stuff, just size and passion.

Anyway, it's a wonderful gift as a Black artist, as an African-American. Formerly Negro, [chuckles] to get to sing a Negro song on a Broadway stage, to sing a Black song on a Broadway stage. This is written in my tongue. I understand this language. I understand these emotions. It's just a real gift.

Alison Stewart: Kara, what muscles do you get to flex playing Lutiebelle?

Kara Young: Oh, [chuckles] I feel like Lutiebelle gets to flex all her muscles. I think there's something in the freedom in the act of pretending when we get to that scene. Honestly, as an exploration, it's like, what does a fish out of water actually look like when they land in a place, in an unknown place? What does a young woman coming into a new place, what does the freedom look like within her body? What does freedom look like within the Black vessel when their life has not been free in some regard? What does freedom actually mean to the physical story, to the storytelling of Lutiebelle in her journey?

Alison Stewart: Kenny, what did you see in each of these actors that you realized you could use and you really leaned into, that became part of the production?

Kenny Leon: Brilliance. This play would not be what it is without this cast. In many ways, I think we lead with love, and I found artists who want to lean in with love with me. In a big way, this is just honoring everybody that's ever been, that's been an African-American artist. It's like every night when I see what these two and the rest of the cast do each night, I see and feel Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. I see and feel Eartha Kitt. I feel August Wilson. I feel the Nicholas Brothers. I feel everything that we have given to America as artists. I feel that energy and that rhythm and that spirit. It's a way of honoring that because we are just continuing their work.

We're just continuing what they laid down. It's just an honor to have the opportunity. Just now, when I was listening to them do that scene, you can sit here and hear the poetry and the beauty of the language. That's just, I say, "Davis, that's Ruby Dee." You can just feel it and you just, "Oh my God." Not every actor is going to give you that, to say let's just be that vessel. What I get from them is them giving themselves up to be the vessel that I say Davis breathes life into this stage and to give that to this audience in 2023.

Alison Stewart: For you, Leslie, because you get the Tony for Hamilton, you decide, "I'm going to strike while the iron's hot. I want to do Purlie Victorious." Someone else had the rights. You had to have to get people on board. Six years later it happens, but of course, a lot's happened in those six years. I've been thinking a lot about after seeing the show that what this show means after the spring and summer of 2020 and the reawakening, what the struggle for basic rights for Black Americans. That this show might have hit differently before 2020. That maybe this--

Leslie Odom Jr.: Might have.

Alison Stewart: Things happen for reasons at times. Right?

Leslie Odom Jr.: Right. I think of everything. As an artist, I think it's our job-- I speak for myself. It is my job. When I get the inspiration for anything-- I believe inspiration comes from a divine source, and so I run after inspiration with an urgency. I've been in a sprint for six years. I didn't know it was going to take six years, but what you're hoping to do is to meet a moment. Sometimes that takes six years. It takes six years in a full sprint. Sometimes it'll happen in six months, but even a Hamilton.

You think of had Hamilton hit 3 years later or 10 years earlier, it could have been missed. Down at the public theater, I didn't know-- Look at Merrily We Roll Along, this Stephen Sondheim play, finding all this success, and their original run, they ran 23 performances or 14 performances. Sometimes it doesn't hit. It's something that you believe in. The world isn't ready. Things are not prepared, and so we just feel so thankful in a really tough time in the theater that Purlie Victorious has found its way to its people. We hope it finds its way to more people, like your audience.

Time when shows are getting shut down left and right, it's a really hard business. Purlie Victorious has been extended because Mr. Davis's words are connecting with people in 2023, right now, like you said, in a way that they might not have connected a year ago or six years ago. It does. It really feels like there's a grace for us. I can't wait to get to the theater every night at the music box because I believe there's a little miracle waiting there for me.

Kousha Navidar: That was Alison Stewart's conversation with Purlie Victorious with stars Leslie Odom Jr. and Kara Young and Director Kenny Leon. The show is up for six awards at this year's Tony's.

[MUSIC - Luscious Jackson: Citysong]

Kousha Navidar: Up next, the Broadway show Stereophonic is the most Tony-nominated play ever. We'll hear from the playwright director and composer of the play about a 1970s band coming together to record one great album, even as their personal relationships begin to crumble.

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