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The color purple has represented royalty for time immemorial, so it's an apt symbol for the Broadway musical tour coming to the Performing Arts Center Tuesday. This story has been associated over the last three decades with a queen of literature, a king of cinema and someone who might as well be Monarch of the Media Universe.
If you've read the 1982 novel, you know it's about uneducated, impoverished Celie, who's raped at 14 and then forced to marry a physically and mentally abusive widower. She finds love with Shug, her husband's mistress, and later becomes self-reliant and financially independent. But if you've never paid attention to “The Color Purple” in any of its permutations, read on and get hipper.
The book
Alice Walker won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the National Book Award for the novel, which is set mostly in rural Georgia in the 1930s.
It deals with heavyweight themes, from spousal abuse to female genital mutilation and facial cutting among Africans. Ultimately, it's a story of empowerment for women but also their men, who learn to respect strong partners.
The novel's sexual content and violence, including the beating of a black woman who answers a white man's slap with a blow, made it a target for censors. The American Library Association listed this at No. 18 on its list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-2000.
The film
In 1985, director Steven Spielberg shot a $15 million movie in Anson County, less than an hour southeast of Charlotte. He used a script by Dutch writer Menno Meyjes, whose only other credit was an episode of Spielberg's TV series, “Amazing Stories.”
The movie was a bid by many people with lightweight reputations to be taken seriously for dramatic skills: Meyjes, Spielberg (who was known only for the likes of “Jaws” and “E.T.”), comedian Whoopi Goldberg (who had played dramatic characters only in her stage act before being cast as Celie), and Margaret Avery (who had toiled in TV obscurity for years before being hired to play Shug).
The film earned mixed reviews but scored 11 Academy Award nominations, leading the pack for 1985. The picture, script, Goldberg and Avery were nominated; Spielberg was not. In perhaps the most famous Oscar skunking, it won none. But it grossed almost $100 million domestically, a huge hit in those days.
The Broadway show
The theatrical version opened in 2005, with the book by Marsha Norman (who won the Pulitzer for “'night, Mother”) and music and lyrics by jazz pianist Brenda Russell, Allee Willis (known for writing the theme to TV's “Friends”) and Stephen Bray, one of Madonna's earliest songwriting collaborators.
The show was nominated for 11 Tony awards, but that number proved slightly more lucky: LaChanze, the single-named actress who played Celie, won to break the jinx.
The most famous name in the 910-performance run was High Point's Fantasia Barrino, the “American Idol” winner who took over as Celie in 2007 and will apparently play the role in a 2010 movie of the musical. Kenita Miller, Barrino's Broadway understudy, will do the role in Charlotte.
The Big O
In 1985, Oprah Winfrey was an unknown – yes, there was such a time – who had never been in a film, and had worked in TV news and on a Chicago talk show. She was paid a reported $35,000 to play Sofia, a strong-willed woman who marries Celie's stepson and leaves after he mistreats her.
After “Purple” came out, the 32-year-old Winfrey got an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress, took “The Oprah Winfrey Show” into syndication and began to act (“Native Son”), do TV gigs (“Saturday Night Live”) and produce movies (“The Women of Brewster Place”).
She agreed to be a producer of the Broadway musical version, which began its tour in Chicago, and will be a producer on the film. Tony nominee Felicia Fields, who played Sofia on Broadway, will come to Charlotte in the same role.
The locals
Two North Carolina folks make significant contributions to the musical “Purple.”
Charlotte native and Juilliard School of the Arts graduate Grasan Kingsberry plays the older Adam, Celie's long-lost son, at the end of the show. He originated that role in the Broadway production of “The Color Purple” and is also the tour's fight captain.
Greensboro native Horace V. Rogers, who was in the original Broadway production of “Tarzan,” plays Grady; he's Shug's husband when Shug and Celie fall in love.
