Epic story has transferred well to the big stage
ONE of the big cinematic and literary events of the eighties was The Color Purple.
The book, written by Alice Walker, was published in 1982 and came out on the big screen in 1985 with Steven Spielberg as the director.
It was nominated for 11 Oscars and, strangely, didn’t win any of them.
The story is an epic tale which tells the life of its main character Celie Harris over many years.
Celie’s tale was brought to the stage very successfully a few years ago as a Broadway musical.
The Curve theatre and the Birmingham Hippodrome have revived it with the Leicester venue hosting the premiere last week.
For the stage, the tale has been set to song with around 30 of them being performed during the show.
The music is very much based on gospel, blues and soul which fits in well with the story being set in Georgia at the start of the 20th century.
Life is hard as many try and earn a living in the fields while slavery still casts a shadow over people’s lives.
Celie Harris is an African American teenager with a tough life. She has to endure the death of her mum at an early life. As if that was not bad enough, her father sexually abuses her and virtually keeps her as a slave.
He takes away her two children which he has fathered and she does not know what happens to them. This all takes place in the opening scenes.
She then sacrifices herself to save her younger sister who manages to escape and become a missionary.
Celie is then given away by her dad to an abusive man who takes her as a wife. Celie is essentially still a slave with everything taken away from her. Just for good measure, her new husband beats her.
All this is the platform for her story to be told as she slowly starts to recover parts of her life which have been taken away.
We all take our freedom of choice, our liberty and the ability to love for granted. But Celie has to discover and take control of these for herself.
With such a strong and challenging story, there is a need for the songs to be just as powerful.
And the show delivers in full with a number of very good songs performed during the evening. Even the more mundane numbers still move the story along very well.
The third element to any good musical is a great cast to carry the tale and sing the big songs to make it shine. And they really do shine. From the main character of Celie, beautifully played by T’Shan Williams, through the entire cast - the singing is fabulous.
This is a very good show which features fabulous music and a strong storyline which may well go on to win many awards.