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‘Purple’ majesty
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B+
After four years of searching, “The Color Purple” has finally found its emotional home.
It took a 2004 Alliance Theatre world premiere and a choppy Broadway production that felt designed by a corporate committee headed by Oprah Winfrey. It took mixed reviews and a disappointing Tony Awards showing (11 nominations but just one win).
But somewhere along the way, Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray’s pop musical has worked out the kinks, found its groove and settled comfortably into itself.
You can pick Alice Walker’s popular Georgia-born tale to pieces if you want to — and believe me, I have — but the show that opened last night at the Fox Theatre feels like the musical it was meant to be.
For the next 2 1/2 weeks, the story of Celie and her sprawling circle of intimates will be as rapturously clucked about as the arrival of Shug Avery at Harpo’s juke-joint.
A good deal of the hooting and hollering will be a tribute to the knockout cast, featuring Jeannette Bayardelle as the shy and retiring Celie; original cast member Felicia P. Fields as the indomitable Sofia; and Atlanta native Stu James as Sofia’s husband, Harpo. (Angela Robinson plays sultry Shug, Rufus Bonds Jr. is the mean and abusive Mister, and former American Idol contestant LaToya London is Celie’s sister, Nettie.)
The backbone of the story is Celie’s awakening — from a so-called ugly young girl into a confident and self-accepting town matriarch. It is remarkable to see the eyes of this tired, awkward and socially uncomfortable woman slowly open to the possibilities of love. Bayardelle calibrates this transformation by flashing glimpses of Celie’s adorable comic underside, her latent sexual hunger and, since this is a musical, her vocal charisma, which can turn sweet lullabies and scorching belts into sublime theatrical moments.
In a nicely detailed performance, Bonds creates a hard-nosed, whip-cracking and abusive Mister, who wrestles with Celie’s curse in a thunderous, Mephistopholean scene. Robinson’s Shug is funny, glamorous, entertaining and wisely low-key, so as not to steal the thunder of the other strong women characters. But her take is not particularly fresh or original. Kinda just the same old Shug.
Though Celie’s relationships with Shug and Mister splinter off into solitude, the fire and spark of Harpo and Sofia never go out. Fields, who has been involved with this project from the get-go, delivers a Sofia that is as salty and irrascible as ever. Recalling the legendary Ethel Waters in her prime, Fields cracks up the audience, reduces it to tears, then washes away the pain with laughter. Celie’s the lead, but Sofia is the soul of “The Color Purple.”
James steps into Harpo’s britches with a sweet, tender masculinity. When Sofia rails at his father, you can see Harpo’s impulse to protect her, and the couple’s sexual chemistry just gets better over time. James’ Harpo sings wonderfully, gyrates his hips like he means it and even takes a little spanking from Sofia.
At the end of the day, does this pop-music pastiche still sound saccharine and the lyrics cliched? Is Walker’s wildy convoluted plot still resolved with a few phone calls and flashbacks whipped together by librettist Marsha Norman? Does the Africa scene still feel like it belongs in “The Lion King”?
Yes, yes and yes.
But this ensemble is so good, Donald Byrd’s choreography is so energetic and joyous, the emotional high notes so real that you forgive the flaws.
Life, as Celie discovers, isn’t perfect. Neither is musical theater. Maturity takes time, and requires a capacity for love and forgiveness. I’m happy to report that “The Color Purple” has flowered into a thing of beauty. It feels organic, moves fluidly and plays like clockwork.
The 411: Through Aug 3. Presented by Theater of the Stars, Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St. N.E, Midtown. 404-817-8700, ticketmaster.com
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