Purple Rain Marquee is Up - Who is in it?- Page 3

[MrMushnik]

Posted: 10/20/25 at 4:54pm

Wife and I saw it Saturday evening and YIKES! Easily one of the worst shows I've ever seen. Ran 3 hours and most of that was just characters doing funny voices talking and talking and talking. The music was pretty much an afterthought and the songs that were chosen didn't even really do what they were intended to do. Now I am not a fan of Prince or his music and have never seen the original film, but surely they could do better than this. 

Prince and Apollonia share maybe 10 minutes of stage time and a weekend together within the story and yet we're expected to believe their relationship is this mega-important thing. They literally don't interact in the entire second act and Apollonia's resolution is done completely off-stage.

The performer playing prince is a good musician but a terrible actor and the Prince character himself is absent from most of the second act except for a few scenes where he lays on stage while recorded videos of people screaming at him are displayed above. Then a few more characters come on stage and yell at him in person, then more video is played of people screaming at him, then he contemplates suicide because he's an a-hole and people yelled at him. Then he gets one last pep talk, cheers way up and sings Purple Rain, curtain. I kid you not that's his arc.

The music is not well chosen and will massively disappoint people going in thinking its going to be a greatest hits jukebox musical ala Beautiful Noise or MJ. The songs are just boring. Literally twice a song is sung on stage and then characters in the show comment how bad the song just was. Like WTF? 

The "comedy" is very one-note and basically the humor comes from the "villain" being a misogynistic pig making comments about bitches, hoes, and being on your period. I'm not kidding. 

There are some monologues that are so long and so pointless you feel you were watching a high school one act play. 

This show has zero idea what its trying to be. Is it totally fictional, based on true events, biographical, WHAT? The script is honestly laughable. The dialogue is amateurish. They refer to real places like Lake Minnetonka, but then instead of using names like First Avenue and Minneapolis they use THE FIRST and MINNEAPPLE. 

This show is DOA and needs to be completely redone, from scratch. The audience was completely decked out in purple but you could sense extreme unease and disappointment. Just make a Prince greatest hits show, nobody wants this angry mess.

[KevinKlawitter]

Posted: 10/27/25 at 3:01pm

Response from one of the more prominent community theatre directors from my area:

I enjoyed parts of it.  It’s definitely in need of more “trimming”.  The cast was strong. The guy who played Prince was very good as was the guy who played Morris Day.  I honestly think the direction wasn’t very strong.  It was very “busy”…the blocking didn’t do a good job focusing where the action was happening.  Also the source material is literally the movie (which was abjectly bad) so I’m not sure it will get markedly better.  I think that there are definitely scenes that went on too long, and were far too “dramatic” -essentially beating the audience to death with the point. Those scenes are contributing to the 3 hours that could be shaved down to 2 1/2.  There is a ton of dancing which I enjoyed on some level, but was IMO distracting at times.  Like too much of a good thing.  Also they use film projections A LOT.  I’m not opposed to mixed media, but it felt very overdone. Again it sort of took you out of the show a bit. In some ways I felt like all the videos of “flashbacks” broke the magic and 4th wall of the show.  Most of my criticism has to do with what I think was weak direction. I was genuinely hoping they would find a director who would take a mediocre (I’m being generous) movie and be able to flush out a more poignant story. I think there is one there, but this sort of missed the mark for me.  I’m glad I went, and I think if they do take it to Broadway they need a new director.  To me it’s like the MJ Musical…not great, but with the strong fan base and cult following,
I can see it doing well- IF they fix some of these things.  It was too much and not enough all at the same time.

[uncageg]

Posted: 10/27/25 at 3:59pm

MrMushnik said: "Wife and I saw it Saturday evening and YIKES! Easily one of the worst shows I've ever seen. Ran 3 hours and most of that was just characters doing funny voices talking and talking and talking. The music was pretty much an afterthought and the songs that were chosen didn't even really do what they were intended to do. Now I am not a fan of Prince or his music and have never seen the original film, but surely they could do better than this.

Prince and Apollonia share maybe 10 minutes of stage time and a weekend together within the story and yet we're expected to believe their relationship is this mega-important thing. They literally don't interact in the entire second act and Apollonia's resolution is done completely off-stage.

The performer playing prince is a good musician but a terrible actor and the Prince character himself is absent from most of the second act except for a few scenes where he lays on stage while recorded videos of people screaming at him are displayed above. Then a few more characters come on stage and yell at him in person, then more video is played of people screaming at him, then he contemplates suicide because he's an a-hole and people yelled at him. Then he gets one last pep talk, cheers way up and sings Purple Rain, curtain. I kidyou not that's his arc.

The music is not well chosen and will massively disappoint people going in thinking its going to be a greatest hits jukebox musical ala Beautiful Noise or MJ. The songs are just boring. Literally twice a song is sung on stage and then characters in the show comment how bad the song just was. Like WTF?

The "comedy" is very one-note and basically the humor comes from the "villain" being a misogynistic pig making comments about bitches, hoes, and being on your period. I'm not kidding.

There are some monologues that are so long and so pointless you feelyou were watching a high school one act play.

This show has zero idea what its trying to be. Is it totally fictional, based on true events, biographical, WHAT? The script is honestly laughable. The dialogue is amateurish. They refer to real places like Lake Minnetonka, but then instead of using names like First Avenue and Minneapolis they use THE FIRST and MINNEAPPLE.

This show is DOAand needs to be completely redone, from scratch. The audience was completely decked out in purple but you could sense extreme unease and disappointment. Just make a Prince greatest hits show, nobody wants this angry mess."

 

You evidently didn't know that this is based on the movie with the songs from the movie in it. It is not his life story or a "greatest hits show".