imafantu, to answer your questions here is what I wrote in another thread :
My only real disappointment on this trip happened on the first Saturday evening when I attended "The Color Purple". Let me say this now: nothing about the cast disappointed me. They were excellent. The performances and the production were all strong — the sets were spectacular, with all the bells and whistles of a big-money Broadway production; the singing was top-notch, the dancing was strong, and the costumes were incredible. But the story, the lyrics and the music were all forgettable.
The problem, in a nutshell, was that the musical tried to do too much. It tried to be faithful to the book, even going so far as putting scenes into the musical that the film had taken out. Now Alice Walker’s book, while powerful, is flawed; it goes on too long, and it romanticizes to some degree the whole Africa episode. But in the book the flaws are minor. The musical, though, rather than recognizing those flaws and working around them, maybe even attempting to avoid them, blew them to major proportions.
The whole Africa episode was reinterpreted and romanticized far more than Walker’s original, and it felt artificial and almost offensive. It looked like something out of "The Lion King", but it didn’t work nearly as well; after all, "The Lion King" was a cartoon, and that sort of scene fit better because it was cartoonish. And the story went on and on, including every small episode of Celie’s life, rather than looking for the story arc and playing to its strengths. In all, the musical, which went on for almost three hours, felt long, and didn’t engage me in the powerful story of Celie and her finding of her strength in any way near the way it should.
Part of the problem was the music itself, which was neither great nor terrible, but which didn’t say anything at all. It sounded like a string of minor jazz, soul and gospel hits all strung together, but it didn’t add anything really to the story. The only bit of the adaptation that had promise was the inclusion of the “Church Women”, who made comments on individuals’ characters and (in the beginning at least) helped move the story along. If they had been used more throughout the musical and had been put to work to help move the faltering second half, I think it would have been better.
"Smart! And into all those exotic mystiques -- The Kama Sutra and Chinese techniques. I hear she knows more than seventy-five. Call me tomorrow if you're still alive!"
