'The Color Purple,' an unlikely musical triumph

 Sing a song of sexual abuse, poverty, racism?

Will there be a dance about adultery and jukebox lesbianism thrown in?

Scott Sanders, the originating producer of "The Color Purple," the musical, admits that some people thought he was insane or foolhardy when he suggested 10 years ago turning Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel into a musical. The musical arrives in Norfolk at Chrysler Hall tonight after a Broadway run and a national tour that has returned well more than $100 million on its original $11 million investment.

It has brought the elusive African American market to Broadway, with blacks making up more than 50 percent of its New York audience. More than that, it has become a redemptive celebration of freedom to women who nightly relish the moment when Celie, a downtrodden woman who has been little more than a servant to her abusive husband, Mister, finally stands up and walks out.

There are cheers in the theater. Every night.

The 1985 movie version, directed by Steven Spielberg, brought Oscar nominations to Whoopi Goldberg (as Celie), untested actress Oprah Winfrey (who played the strong-willed Sofia, who is tortured and thrown in jail when she refuses to become the mayor's wife's maid) and Margaret Avery (who played the worldly jukebox singer Shug Avery).

Sanders, who had never produced a Broadway musical, had worked mainly with music stars (Diana Ross, the Commodores, Marvin Gaye) and entertainers such as Dame Edna.

"I couldn't help but see 'The Color Purple' as a musical," he said from his New York City office. "I read the book after I saw the movie and I immediately saw it in a different way. Alice Walker's dialogue fairly sings. The whole thing is the triumph of Celie, a downtrodden black woman in the 1930s who is valued by no one, particularly not by herself, until her sister and an independent juke-joint singer start her on the road to self-discovery.

"It becomes not a story just of day-to-day survival but the need to grow and blossom."

When he mentioned the musical idea to Goldberg, she said, "You might just as soon do a musical of 'Schindler's List.' "

Sanders wouldn't give up. He recalled that "when I went to high school in St. Petersburg, Fla., it was the first year of desegregation and busing in Pinellas County, and I went to a largely black high school. It was a new experience, and a wonderful one, to be exposed to black culture during that time. I never forgot it."

He felt, too, that musicals were changing from the old boy-meets-girl escapism. There had been hit dramatic musicals from "Oliver!" to "Les Miserables" and "Phantom of the Opera." "I felt 'The Color Purple' could be the African American 'Fiddler on the Roof,' " he said.

But nothing could happen without the approval of the author. He flew from New York to Walker's Berkeley, Calif., home and spent an afternoon pitching his idea. "I'd worked with some very famous stars, but I'll admit I was intimidated by her," Sanders said. "She was very much, still, a sweet Southern lady, but a steel magnolia. She looked like Yoda listening. Then she said simply, 'No. I don't think so.' "

He didn't give up. Months later, he invited her to New York to see Broadway shows. They went to "The Fantasticks" and "Phantom of the Opera." He staged his biggest splash with a "small dinner party" of 40 people on a yacht circling Manhattan with guests that included Diana Ross and her daughters and Lincoln Center producer Bernard Gersten.

Walker approved the project.

Sanders spent the next eight years developing the musical. Marsha Norman, a Pulitzer Prize winner herself for the drama " 'night, Mother," wrote the script. (She also came to Norfolk to work on the musical "The Secret Garden," which premiered at Virginia Stage Company.) An array of Hollywood pop composers contributed to the score. Quincy Jones wanted to hear it and get involved. Chicagoan Gary Griffin was brought in as the director.

But the show that comes into Norfolk tonight has a new title - "Oprah Winfrey Presents The Color Purple." How so?

"By a most unlikely turn of events," the producer said. "We were doing a preview and we invited magazine editors, hoping they'd do a feature. We had to move fast because a show called 'Mambo Kings' flopped and, suddenly, the Broadway Theater was available. We had to open 'The Color Purple' with much less time for marketing than we'd planned.

"Among those we invited to see it was Gayle King of O Magazine and Oprah's best friend. She had another appointment and said she could only stay for the first act, but when I went over to say goodbye, she was in tears and said she was canceling everything and staying for the rest."

The next week, Sanders got a call from Winfrey, inviting him to visit her in Chicago. She wanted in.

Sanders went back to his investors and reduced their investment to make room for Oprah to invest $1 million and put her name on the marquee.

She publicized the musical on her talk show. She lined up a group of celebrities for opening night that would rival Oscar Night. She went on the "Late Show with David Letterman" to publicize the premiere. Just as her book club made John Steinbeck's 1939 novel "The Grapes of Wrath" a best-seller all over again, she made "The Color Purple" into a hit Broadway musical.

Still, Sanders worried most if the black audience would show up. The cast did TV spots for Black History Month and ads were taken out in the New York Post rather than the New York Times.

"Our studies," Sanders said, "showed, disturbingly, that African Americans make up less than 4 percent of Broadway's audience. With our show, from the first, they made up slightly over 50 percent. It worked."

Next, he's working on a musical on the life of famed magician Houdini. He thinks it will be a good deal easier.

Mal Vincent, (757) 446-2347, mal.vincent@pilotonline.com