The Color Purple

Reviews

• How can deprivation become joy? That’s not only the animating question of The Color Purple, the 1982 Alice Walker novel made into a musical in 2005, but also the operating principle behind John Doyle’s triumphant revival of that musical, starring the stupendous Cynthia Erivo in her Broadway debut. For once, the word “revival” is apt: Doyle’s intervention amounts to a kind of theatrical CPR, restarting the heart of a show that, in its original production, seemed to die before your eyes. 
  Now we can see that that the problem was a bad fit of content and style. Like the novel, to which it is mostly faithful, The Color Purple covers some 40 years in the life of a poor black woman named Celie, barely surviving in the Jim Crow South of the early 20th century. It is not, for most of the action, a happy life... 
  
  ------New York Magazine

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• Cynthia Erivo, a Brit who’s unknown in New York, is spectacular as the beleaguered Celie, who loses her innocence, self-esteem and all else thanks to men in her life. Reprising a role she originated two years ago at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London, she sings with such clear, honest openness that you feel everything she’s feeling — and she feels a lot.
  Matching her is “Dreamgirls” Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson, who’s in great voice and whose Hollywood glamour gives her smaller role of the sexually omnivorous club singer Shug Avery just the right added oomph. Danielle Brooks is outstanding as the defiant and unbreakable Sophia. Isaiah Johnson, Joaquina Kalukango and Kyle Scatliffe lend fine support as Celie’s abusive husband, her sister, and Sophia’s spouse.
  
  -----New York Daily News

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• Considering that the original Broadway run only closed in 2008 (after a respectable 910 performances), it seems almost too soon to revive The Color Purple, the musical based on Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and Steven Spielberg's subsequent motion picture. Yet that's exactly what an army of producers (including Oprah Winfrey, who starred in the 1985 film and produced the initial Broadway run) have done by bringing a new mounting from London's Menier Chocolate Factory to the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre. After seeing the show again, this seemingly premature return makes sense: It's a sheer delight to hear Brenda Russell, Allee Willis, and Stephen Bray's soulful score on a Broadway stage, performed by immensely talented vocalists. Also, John Doyle's stripped-down staging better serves Marsha Norman's efficient book than the original did. Lushly melodic shows like this, featuring a big story and even bigger heart, are always a welcome sight on the Great White Way.
  
  ----TheaterMania

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• How can deprivation become joy? That’s not only the animating question of The Color Purple, the 1982 Alice Walker novel made into a musical in 2005, but also the operating principle behind John Doyle’s triumphant revival of that musical, starring the stupendous Cynthia Erivo in her Broadway debut. For once, the word “revival” is apt: Doyle’s intervention amounts to a kind of theatrical CPR, restarting the heart of a show that, in its original production, seemed to die before your eyes. 
  Now we can see that that the problem was a bad fit of content and style. Like the novel, to which it is mostly faithful, The Color Purple covers some 40 years in the life of a poor black woman named Celie, barely surviving in the Jim Crow South of the early 20th century. It is not, for most of the action, a happy life... 
  
  ------New York Magazine

  Read More