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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2010 > January > 13
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Review: ‘The Color Purple’
Why sing?
That question drives any musical’s creation. Why should a character burst into song?
“The Color Purple,” which opened Tuesday at UT’s Bass Concert Hall, never settles on an answer to what parts of the story should be told in song versus speaking. But when lead female figures Celie (Kenita Miller), Shug (Phyre Hawkins) and Sofia (Felicia Fields) burst into emotion-driven song the musical opens up, inviting audiences to share in the women’s pain, sensuality, and ever-rising strength. And the three performers in these significant roles are fantastic.
The musical’s confusion over song creates an odd flatness, particularly in Act I, despite the heart-wrenching story. Based on Alice Walker’s 1983 novel of the same name, the book by playwright Marsha Norma and music and lyrics by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray often has characters sing at each other with inflections more like speaking than singing, a not uncommon feature of more operatic musicals.
But the style feels randomly dispersed across Celie’s story: a woeful tale of a poor black woman twice raped by her father, then sold into marriage for the price of a cow.
Celie’s life seems destined only for pain when her husband abuses her and exiles Celie’s beloved sister, Nettie. Then barrel-tongued Sofia marries Celie’s stepson and jazz singer Shug ignites Celie’s heart in a lesbian relationship the musical tiptoes around. (Though the musical addresses the women’s romance more than Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film.)
As Sofia, Fields is a woman who cannot be sidestepped. She introduces Celie to her response to overbearing men with the song “Hell No!” Sofia can only serve as what Celie is not. Shug transform Celie into a woman who can shout back (sing back) at her male oppressors.
Shug’s arrival affects more than just Celie: the musical gets better too. It’s almost as though the show, like the town’s men, saves its best for her. Suddenly songs have a richness they lacked earlier. The women use this richness to overcome the bleak narrative. Of course Celie’s second act stand against her abusive husband Mister (Rufus Bonds, Jr.) comes in a long, loud note of song exploding so intensely from her belly that she must bend her knees and clench her fists.
Now set apart through music Celie separates from the rest of the town — a quality oddly absent earlier. Walker’s book is an existential crisis, told through Celie’s letters to a God whose existence she doubts. But the musical encases Celie in community—particularly the community of the African American church. The always-present church ladies and multiple comic gags shift the story’s tone from dramatic tragedy to a hopeful mix of drama and comedy.
Then again, can a Broadway musical tell a story of existential loneliness?
In moments, John Lee Beatty’s gorgeous set, Brian MacDevitt’s lighting design, and Gary Griffin’s direction suggest an other-worldliness that momentarily isolates Celie, but then becomes her refuge: the place where she openly loves Shug or dreams of her sister Nettie in Africa. Her home flies away as Celie kneels in a pool of light grieving her sister’s banishment, then later the set disappears as Celie and Shug sing before a vivid pink horizon.
Donald Byrd’s choreography never takes advantage of the rich movement vocabulary offered by the musical’s setting: the jook joint where Shug sings or the long dream sequence of Nettie in Africa. The former only has tiny tastes of the Lindy hop, the swing dance borne in hidden African American nightclubs, and the latter is a bizarre mix of ballet, jazz, and touches of West African movement.
Despite its problems, the musical does its work: it tells a story that eventually needs its song.
‘The Color Purple’
When: 8 p.m. today-Jan. 16; 2 p.m. Jan. 16-17, 7:30 p.m. Jan. 17
Where: Bass Concert Hall, UT campus
Cost: $20-$69
Info: www.texasperformingarts.org
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
