The Color Purple is official! — Page 2

The book consists of a young semi-literate girl's letters to God in which she describes her life and what happened to her over the course of many years -- some of it painful, some of it life-affirming and revelatory. There are many different ways the novel could have been adapted -- the screenwriter took a very literal, didactic approach, stripping the story of its poignance and poetry, turning the black men into either boogie men or clowns without any nuance or depth.

I also take issue with Spielberg's direction which borders on the cartoonish (more than once, Whoopi Goldberg looked like E.T. to me) with doses of slapstick and minstrelry along the way. This is on the page a very serious, powerful story, but in his hands it too often plays like a melodramatic soap opera laden with over-the-top comic relief and lots of stereotypes. Is there a reason that Rae Dawn Chong is doing a Butterfly McQueen impression throughout? Then again, I guess it matches Oprah's rendition of Hattie McDaniel.

Spielberg didn't do his homework on this film -- one would think that the man had never met any black people and that he had gotten his impressions of how to depict them in the film from watching Gone With the Wind and old Amos and Andy re-runs -- and as a result the final product is a shadow of the source material, lacking the sort of care and truth and sensitivity which he was able to bring other projects of his (notably Schindler's List, which obviously had greater resonance with him than did Celie's story here).

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Updated On: 7/6/05 at 06:58 PM

I imagine they're going back to the original novel for the book of the musical.

The book is about 300 pages. I remember it being a rather quick read -- maybe a day or two. You have to get used to young Celie's grammar at the beginning, which might slow you down a little (it's sort of like reading Liam), but it's a terrific piece of writing (Alice Walker won the Pulitzer for it).

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Yeah, I haven't seen The Color Purple, but I can imagine Speilberg over doing it, as he usually does with his movies.

Is the musical really big enough for the cavernous Broadway Theatre?

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Mister!

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Celie calls him Mister.
Shug calls him Albert.

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I won't lie... I found the movie compelling. But I haven't seen it in years. If I watch it again tomorrow, I might find the stereotypes particularly offensive -- especially as a black man who knows that mediated images of black masculinity are often accepted as true.

Updated On: 7/7/05 at 12:50 AM

bumpity bump bump.

I'm a lover of both the novel and the film...it's about the only Speilberg film that i do enjoy. in regards to the stereotypes of the men, is this not told from Celie's point of view? Thru Celie's eyes, would the men not appear domineering, overpowering, etc? Granted, I'm not a semi literate girl/woman of color in the old south, but the movie made sense to me.

In regards to the musical, all I can say is I seriously hope they've done lots of rethinking, reworking & LOTS of rewriting since the Atlanta engagement. It was a disaster. Most of the cast needed to be scrapped (save LaChanze and Adraine Lenox, who sadly will not be rejoining the cast) as did most of the material. Did anyone see that production? hear the songs? "In Miss Celie's Pants"? "Push the Button"? "What Can I Do for You"? PLEASE!!! I could go on. My friend (another lover of both the film and the novel) and I came away saying "Well, the set & lighting design were good."

That said, LaChanze truly was marvelous and I could easily see her winning a Tony for her performance. There were maybe 3 or 4 good songs, but all in all, a BAD night in the theater...worse than "Thou Shalt Not."

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Updated On: 7/7/05 at 03:17 PM

I really have to disagree with this concept that the film is Celie's perspective on the males around her. The film is too straightforward in approach to justify that theory. Nothing implies that you are seeing everything through a skewed perspective. There are so few mainstream Hollywood depictions of black life as it is, and for The Color Purple to have reached a broad audience with its outlandish and destructive stereotypes has always horrified me.

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Will, i agree with you im scared that this will be a flop

I too saw the show in ATL the only good things i had to say about it were the sets and the church ladies.

I wish it was more like the film
The script was a mess the cast imitated the actors from the film which didnt go over well.

I did not like how La Chanze played Celie she made her too bold and i thought she was supposed to be scared of Mister.

Nice NPR piece. Hope to see it in previews this fall.

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Will, it appears that you and I are in agreement on what we saw of The Color Purple here in Atlanta. As I stated in a thread on the off-topic board, I disliked it so much I debated whether to return for the second act. I think the only thing I liked about it was LaChanze's performance, and I couldn't help but feel badly for her that she was stuck in such a bad production. And as for the church lady trio, they were ok the first time they did their shtick, but after that they were so annoying they made my head hurt.

Of course, judging from the enthusiastic standing O that it got, there were a lot of people who seemed to have enjoyed the show, but it just didn't work for me. It was hard for me to become involved in the story, to feel Celie's plight, to feel anything, because whatever solemn, insightful, character-building moments there might have been were intermixed with bad acting, mediocre to forgettable music, and big dance production numbers (especially the second act jazz routine in Celie's store...excruciating) that really could have been left out. I also wish the creatives had, to use a now cliched expression, "thought outside the box" a little. It's difficult source material to adapt to the stage to begin with, but the show they built ended up being more blandly commercial than artistically daring. They followed the traditional Broadway musical comedy mold, and I'm not entirely convinced that that will work for material like The Color Purple. I wish they'd been more visionary with it than traditionalist.

Regarding the other performances, I like Adriane Lenox, and she sang beautifully, but I found her performance as Shug to be rather weak, and disappointing. She never really brought the character to life; Shug was a bit dull. Saycon Sengbloh, I thought, gave a very nice performance as Nettie. I didn't find Mister to be too terribly menacing, because the actor playing him simply didn't do a good job of making him so. As for the rest of the cast, I hope the richer NY talent pool will improve things there.

I could go on, and on, but I'll just repeat what I've always thought and what's been said here: to wit...the show, as staged in Atlanta, needs a lot of work. In all areas. Even then, I worry about its success on the Great White Way, but I wish it well.