PREACHER MAN

Leslie Odom, Jr., stars in "Purlie Victorious."

- VINSON CUNNINGHAM

The Reverend Purlie Victorious Judson (Leslie Odom, Jr.), the hero of Ossie Davis's 1961 comedy, "Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch"-revived on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre, directed by Kenny Leon-is, above all else, a hustler. You might know somebody like this: He blusters onto the stage of your life, pouring out plans before he's properly introduced himself, energized toward some vista that only he can see. He puts an arm over your shoulder and tries to convince you that you're on your way there together, as partners, but in his mind's eye, you can tell, he's up in the pulpit and you're down in the seats. Half of what he says sounds cockamamie, but something about him-his personal history, perhaps, or a kind of animal endurance in his bearing-persuades you that, somehow, he'll get what he wants.

In the case of this show, most of what Purlie wants is a fair shake for Black people. He's an itinerant minister who has come back to the postbellum Georgia plantation where he grew up. He wants to rally the people there-who now work as sharecroppers for Ol' Cap'n Cotchipee (the intensely funny Jay O. Sanders) to take back their local church, Big Bethel. He cooks up a scheme that will, with one stroke, get them the deed to the church and free his family from their impossible debts to Ol' Cap'n.