True Color
BAM shares her review of “The Color Purple,” which gives a musical spin to the Pulitzer Prizewinning story.
Adrianna Hicks makes a glorious return to Oklahoma playing the principal role in the Tony Award-winning revival of “The Color Purple.”
Leading a richly talented cast, the University of Oklahoma graduate dazzles as the downtrodden Celie in the national tour that opened its Oklahoma City run Tuesday and continues through Sunday at the Civic Center Music Hall.
Set in rural Georgia from 1909 to 1949, the newly reimagined musical adaptation of Alice Walker’s 1982 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel centers on a black woman who struggles to overcome a lifetime of abuse, poverty and powerlessness in the hopes of one day reuniting with her long-lost sister.
It’s one of those stories that practically begs for a big, epic treatment, and we’ve seen that before, from Steven Spielberg’s 11-time Oscar-nominated 1985 film, as well as from the original 2005 Broadway production, which earned 11 Tony nominations.
But director John Doyle’s minimalist reworking of the musical compels the audience by keeping the story intimately uncluttered and tightly focused on Celie’s trials, tribulations and ultimate triumphs.
With its book by Marsha Norman, the remounting of “The Color Purple” bowed on Broadway in late 2015, and it’s coming to OKC just a year after the Broadway production closed. Before she was cast as Celie for the tour, Hicks was a swing performer and understudy on the Broadway production, and from the way she so fully embodies the character, it’s clear she knows Celie well.
Featuring music and lyrics by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray, the stirring score of jazz, ragtime and blues rouses from the opening number, the gospel raveup “Mysterious Ways.” And it’s a good thing, too, since much of the material is pretty harrowing.
After just a brief glimpse of Celie and her sister, Nettie (N’Jameh Camara), playing together like the children they are, we are introduced to Celie as a motherless, battered 14-year-old about to give birth for the second time. As with her first baby, her cruel Pa (J.D. Webster), who fathered both her children, takes her newborn away, reasoning she has too much work to do keeping his house to care for any infants.
Celie then obeys Pa’s edict that she marry the whip-wielding widower Mister (Gavin Gregory), who deems her ugly, beats her and works her mercilessly keeping his house and caring for his children, who as old or older than she. When both Pa and Mister try to molest Nettie, her sister flees, and after years pass with no word from her, Celie assumes her beloved sister is dead.
But Celie finds friendship and love with Sofia (Carrie Compere), the indomitable wife of Mister’s milquetoast son Harpo (J. Daughtry), and Shug Avery (Carla R. Stewart), a charismatic jazz singer who is Mister’s longtime mistress. These women, and her memories of Nettie, inspire her to keep her faith alive, to find worth within herself and, eventually, to stand up to her husband and make her own way, even if she is poor, black and a woman — three things it did not necessarily pay to be in that place and time.
The stellar cast wows on the big and boisterous numbers like Sofia’s defiant declaration “Hell No!,” Shug’s raunchy juke-joint jive “Push da Button” and Harpo and Sofia’s bawdy ballad “Any Little Thing.”
But the company proves transcendent on the redemption story’s inspirational anthems, with Stewart’s profound performances of the title theme and “Too Beautiful for Words” practically defying description as she urges Celie not to lose hope for better days.
Doyle’s stripped-down treatment keeps Celie’s touching transformation from heartbroken teen to browbeaten wife to emancipated entrepreneur in the forefront. Washed-out earth tones dominate his set and Ann Hould-Ward’s costume designs in Act 1, with yellows, crimsons and, yes, purples blooming with the protagonist in the second half.
The entire show is staged with little more than a few bolts of cloth, some woven baskets and a group of wooden chairs. Although the symbolism of the chairs lining the stark wooden backdrop all the way to the curtain is a bit muddled — and seeing Mister’s field hands use them for shovels and hoes is stretching the minimalism construct to the point of distraction — the spare design effectively showcases the sterling cast.
None of the players shines brighter than Hicks, who assuredly steps into the role that earned Whoopi Goldberg a Golden Globe, her predecessor Cynthia Erivo and original Broadway star LaChanze Tonys and “American Idol” Fantasia Barrino great reviews. Hicks just continues to wow as she enacts Celie’s metamorphosis from listless, flat-voiced doormat to strong, confident businesswoman. Although just her smile is enough to enchant the audience, her musical declaration “I’m Here” electrified Tuesday night’s crowd, even bringing a few people to their feet with an exhilaration that carried straight through to the final title reprise and the last “amen.”