After the success of 'Hamilton,' Leslie Odom Jr. was ready to bring a 'Purlie Victorious' revival to Broadway. It took him six years.
knew what he wanted his next stage project to be — he just didn't expect it to take him years to get it to Broadway.Purlie Victorious"In an interview the day after the Tony Awards in 2016, somebody asked me what I wanted to do next on Broadway," Odom tells EW. "I said, 'It would be nice to do.' I got on a phone call with my agent shortly after, and I was like, 'This piece hasn't been done. Surely somebody will take a meeting with us on this thing.
Because of that, Odom had hoped to make this happen years ago, but he says that there's a certain sense of kismet to it finally coming back to Broadway in 2023. "Every day that I'm in the rehearsal room with this cast and this director at this time in the country, I get goosebumps. That's not something you manufacture. I'm getting the goosebumps because it feels likewas waiting for such a time as this to make its grand return to the Great White Way in this historic theater.
follows its title character, traveling preacher Purlie Victorious Judson as he returns to his small Georgia town with the goal of saving the community's church, Big Bethel. He also seeks to emancipate the cotton pickers working on Ol' Cap'n Cotchipee's plantation. Purlie recruits Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins to help him in his schemes and his attempts to secure an overdue inheritance from Cotchipee.
Still, that doesn't mean the play is tragedy or trauma porn. In fact, Odom wants to be sure audiences know it's the opposite. "It's everything that I want in an evening of theater, whether I'm on stage or off," he says. "I want to have a foot-stomping good time, and I want to be moved.""Ossie Davis sat down to write a story about growing up in the segregated south in this rural town in Georgia," Odom. continues.
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