: The Color Purple

An Engaging, Entertaining, and Thought Provoking Musical

Boston’s SpeakEasy Theatre has a winning production in The Color Purple, the musical adaptation of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize novel. Director Paul Daigneault mounted an energetic, exciting, and even stirring show with a talented cast of singers, dancers, and actors. While the presentation is powerful and follows Walker’s storyline, Marsha Norman’s sanitized and simplified adaptation lacks the depth of the original text.

The play begins in the early twentieth-century South and follows the life of Celie a poor, rural overworked, victimized black woman, understandably lacking all self-confidence and hope. Raped by her stepfather, she has her first child at age 14 and another soon after. He takes the babies from her and only years later does she discover that they are alive and secure. Her mother dead, her babies gone, Celie’s only friend and confidant is Nettie, her pretty, bright younger sister. The stepfather gives the hard-working Celie (along with a cow) to a brutal man she refers to as Mister and who, in turn, abuses her and drives away Nettie with his sexual advances. Alone, with no one to love and no one who loves her, Celie confides in God through letters, the narrative device for the book and, to a degree, the musical.

The overriding theme is the suffering engendered by racism and misogyny. In contrast to Celie, and to her surprise, two female characters, Sofia and Shug Avery, struggle against their lot. Feisty Sofia refuses to back down, no matter what the cost. When her husband assaults her, she fights back and wins. Ultimately, however, Sofia loses everything she has when she displays the same behavior with white people.  She is viciously beaten, jailed, and forced to work as a maid for the individuals she sassed.

Shug uses her sex appeal, glamour, and talent to get what she wants. A blues singer, she returns to her rural community sick from the high life and takes up with Mister, her former lover. Celie is enthralled by her beauty and worldliness. The two women grow close and become lovers. Shug serves as a role model, helping Celie become independent. Through Shug, Celie discovers the letters her sister Nettie has written to her from Africa over the years, which Mister has hidden. Celie’s rage gives her strength. Eventually, she opens her own business making pants for the women in the local community – a funny twist. Life continues to improve for Celie. She inherits her dead father’s house, is reunited with her sister, and finds her beloved children.

Although cruelty and misery figure unequivocally in the musical, the second act eliminates much of the raison d’être of the book, which is to reveal the ubiquity of sexual and racial discrimination. In the novel Nettie writes approximately two dozen letters to Celie describing her life as a missionary in the African jungle where polygamy and patriarchy are the norm, and the tribe she ministers to is driven off their land by a Dutch rubber company. In the musical, Nettie, placed upstage, speaks one of the letters to Celie. The comparison between the African and African-American cultures is lost.

The scarcely seen Africans are presented as exotics, dressed in colorful tribal costumes parading about upstage and performing a greeting dance for the missionaries. Similarly, the erotic relationship between Celie and Shug is given short shrift.

Both play and book end happily, relationships restored, conflicts resolved. Celie’s last solo, “I’m Here,” beautifully sung by Lovely Hoffman, is a rite of passage for the character who belts out her belief in her own worth.

The large supporting cast is strong and spirited. Among the standouts is Valerie Houston as the pugnacious, forthright, and very funny Sofia, particularly in the show stopping number “Hell No!”

Crystin Gilmore is tough, selfish, tender, and sensual as Shug Avery. Her rendition of “Push the Button” is both rousing and arousing. Maurice Emanuel Parent’s Mister undergoes a complete and believable change of character from sadist to compassionate thinker.

Jenna McFarland Lord’s setting captures the mood of the piece and Celie’s early life. Prominently placed downstage center is a large tree, its branches reaching out to the world. Framing the stage is a roughly constructed brown proscenium reminiscent of a prison. Elisabetta Polito’s costumes are appropriate and clever. They are, as well, the most reliable indication of the passage of the years.

The play runs from Jan. 10-Feb. 8, 2014

Adapted from Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple by Marsha Norman
Music and Lyrics by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis, and Stephen Bray
Directed by Paul Daigneault

Production Credits:
Musical direction, Nicholas James Connell.
Choreography, Christian Bufford.
Set, Jenna McFarland Lord.
Costumes, Elisabetta Polito.
Lights, Karen Perlow and Erik Fox.
Sound, David Reiffel.

Cast
Jye’l Ancrum (young Harpo / young Adam / ensemble),
Kymyra J. anderson-Wolf (young Celie / young Olivia / Chief’s Daughter).
Kira Cowan (Older Olivia / ensemble), Matthews D. (young Harpo / young Adam / ensemble),
Anich D’jae (Squeak / Darlene),
Jared Dixon (Harpo),
Akiah Doyle (young Celie / young Olivia / Chief’s Daughter),
Xikiyah Firmin (young Nettie / Mister’s Daughter / Chief’s Daughter),
Terrell Foster-James (young Man / ensemble, Crystin Gilmore (Shug Avery),
Alia Hodge (ensemble),
Lovely Hoffman (Celie),
Valerie Houston (Sofia),
David Jiles, Jr. (Pa / Grady / ensemble),
Jaime Mclaurin (young Nettie / Henrietta / Mister’s Daughter / Chief’s Daughter),
Cliff Odle (Ol’ Mister / Preacher / ensemble),
Maurice Emmanuel Parent (Mister),
Deborah Pierre (ensemble / Celie Understudy),
Aaron Michael Ray (Chief / Buster / ensemble),
Carolyn Saxon (Doris / Church Soloist / ensemble),
Kelton Washington (Prison Guard / Older Adam / ensemble),
Taylor Washington (Jarene / Daisy / ensemble)
Aubin Wise (Nettie)