‘Color Purple’ is an empowering uplift
Women once silenced find their voice, bursting out in full color and commanding cheers of celebration
The woman wears rags and an apron. She stands tip-toe in the back of the room, her head drooping like a sunflower dying for lack of sunshine. Her husband, a sweaty, foul-mouthed brute, swats her away, telling her the lemonade she has offered isn’t cold enough. She almost makes a face, but doesn’t. She’s learned the violent consequences of having a personality.
In the beginning of “The Color Purple,” the Broadway musical now at the Hobby Center through Sunday, Celie’s silence is a difficult thing to witness. Most of the first act of this vivid musical is hard to bear, not only because we see Celie’s husband, Albert, dehumanize her, threaten her and attempt to rape her sister, but because of how much Albert reminds us of real men.
This is a villain, who curses and thrashes and wields a whip and worse of an ego. This is a real man. Celie, married off without her consent and expected to only clean, cook and bear children, is more than her silence. Because “The Color Purple” is interested in why and how women are silenced, and when those women sing how their music becomes a symbol of empowerment. The opposite to silence thus becomes not language nor rebellion, but the echoing tones of a high C.
That’s why audiences typically can never hold back cheers when women’s humanity begins bursting out in full color. When a man raises a hand to Sofia (a spotlight-stealing Carrie Compere), the stunning and proud wife to Albert’s son, she sings out “Hell No!” Then, like
call-and-response, it’s as if you can hear the audience echoing back that wonderful sentiment: “Hell no.”
When the blues singer Shug Avery (Carla R. Stewart playing the sly, keen seductress) comes to town, she takes the chair that Celie used as a perch and turns it into a rodeo bull. She straddles it, her dress flapping like a color guard and her
sexuality interpreted as feminist rather than titillating. The song she sings reminds us “The Color Purple” wants music to be synonymous with overcoming struggle. “Too Beautiful for Words,” it’s called.
And when Adrianna Hicks, who stars as Celie, bursts out “I am here” in rebellion against Albert, her strength is buoyed not only by the fact that this is the first time she’s ever spoken out against him. She’s also lifted up by the tradition of gospel and the African spiritual.
Hicks is the kind of vocal powerhouse “The Color Purple” needs. She’s not exactly the type of actor for the musical, though. Celie demands subtle action, like smiling through pain, or speaking volumes without using any words. Hicks’ performance is a bit too animated. She sometimes doesn’t quite find that balance between her wordless act-one frowns and the big (too big) gesticulations in act two.
“If God ever listened to poor colored women, the world would be a different place,” Celie says. The knowing exhalation from the audience after the moment suggests that this idea, for the regular American, has every bit of relevance as it did in Celie’s time. God doesn’t seem to intervene much, after all. The women don’t wait around for divine intervention. They get to work. They build homes, start businesses, sew pants, survive beatings, take on young lovers, yearn, nurture, sing, enjoy sex and spit in the face of nasty men.
What joy it is to see women encompass the full range of humanity. How refreshing that, though racism is the backdrop of this story set in 1930s Georgia, the story (adapted from Alice Walker’s famous 1982 novel) chooses to focus on the complexity of black women rather than the bad behavior of white men.
If only we could see more of shows like “The Color Purple.” It’s one of the most uplifting theater productions of the season.