The Broadway musical version of Alice Walker’s great novel “The Color Purple” arrives in sweet home Chicago in the most confident of hues. And surety of creative purpose — in this case, make that spiritual purpose — is the theater’s most powerful and most frequently underestimated secret weapon. It can cover almost any weakness. And it surely will help ensure a successful engagement for this heartfelt, populist show at the Cadillac Palace Theatre.
Despite a long, fraught gestation and mixed Broadway reviews, “The Color Purple” now fully believes in itself. The hesitation and narrative uncertainty visible in Atlanta and New York have largely disappeared. This vocally rich show knows it already has won over the hearts of the paying customers who watch Oprah Winfrey, its most visible producer, and who go to the theater to be moved emotionally, and for a stirring, affirmative story of inspiration.
The story of a young, abused, impoverished African-American woman from rural Georgia who ultimately learns how to triumph over adversity, “The Color Purple” is now a show inclined to make apologies to no one. Comfortable in its own identity, it has time to amuse and empower the balcony. And boy does it relish those sweet moments.
Walker’s novel may have been first read mostly in the quiet of a bedroom or the tranquility of a porch on a summer’s night. Now more than ever, though, the musical version turns its ambiguities, ellipses and uncertainties into a humor-filled gospel of personal fortitude and collective belief.
At Thursday night’s opening, at least, you would have to have been made of cast iron to resist the ebullient, emotional winds. And they weren’t blowing from Lake Michigan. Just the back of the stage. With a few additional puffs from the direction of Harpo Studios.
Does this musical evoke all the poetry and complexity of the original source? It does not.
Does it fully integrate book, visuals and music into a fully coherent artistic metaphor? It does not, for its strands remain varied, eclectic and, in the weaker early sections of the second act, internally incongruous. And as is well-documented, the musical often has to race to fit Walker’s rich and complex narrative into 2 1/2 hours of accessible traffic on a stage.
But these issues are beginning to matter less and less. That’s partly because Gary Griffin’s spirited production seems to have become more at ease with being, for the most part, a musical-comedy event with ample digressions into serious themes. Broader in style, the production now is filled with carefully timed laugh lines and comic takes, and with characters who seem very much aware that they’re playing and living in front of an intensely involved audience.
The Chicago cast has some veterans of Broadway — including the charismatic Chicagoan Felicia P. Fields, who originated the role of Sofia, and who has blossomed into a major national star. Many in this group have played the show numerous times and know where their audience responds. Laudably, Marsha Norman’s musical adaptation does not run from the sexual complexities or human cruelties of Walker’s book. But still, the joy of life now is getting more emphasis than its pains.
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Even the heinous Mister, performed in Chicago by the bizarrely cast Rufus Bonds Jr., now seems more of a lost, redeemable soul than a prosaic, angry man filled with the terrifying violence of sexual anger.
Perhaps the comedy is getting too much focus — but this is a musical, after all, and the end of the show still has many people in tears. And, all in all, I’d say that Chicago is getting the best cast of the three productions I’ve seen and is enjoying the sharpest direction from Griffin.
Often with Broadway musicals, the second person to play a lead role is the best. The need for impact and forceful personality tends to trump vulnerability when it comes to the original star. And the third time around, box-office-boosting names tend to get the nod. The first replacement almost always deserved to be the first lead.
So it went here.
In New York, original star LaChanze was electric but invulnerable. Jeannette Bayardelle, the new Chicago Celie who was playing the role in New York before giving way to the famous Fantasia, is a softer, warmer, more self-effacing actress who doesn’t seem to crave the spotlight. She winds up slowly, but she’s a superb, endlessly rich singer with a gospel-trained voice that accelerates like a rocket ship. You care deeply about her fate. And she is nothing short of spectacular in the show’s big, inspiring ballads.
The happiest surprise of the night, though, was Michelle Williams, who plays Shug Avery. Williams came with at least four potential strikes against her — she’s young, already somewhat famous, inexperienced on a theatrical stage and from the pop-music world. None of that gets in her way. As you might expect from the former member of Destiny’s Child, she knows her way around the show’s mostly bluesy, R&B score. But she’s also a far better actor than you might expect. She looks and feels nothing like a twentysomething pop idol. She has depth, maturity, variety and complexity.
Shug is, in many ways, Walker’s most enigmatic and ambiguous character. Williams dances on that knife-edge and yet, given the style of the musical, also knows how to channel her energy for the collective good. At “The Color Purple,” the musical, that’s the most important requirement.
“The Color Purple”
When: Open run of about six months
Where: Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 W. Randolph St.
Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes
Tickets: $28-85 at 312-902-1400.
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