Review: 'Color Purple' is poignant, if rushed

Covering four decades and three continents with four central female characters, the musical "The Color Purple" is a mad dash to cram a great deal of plot, social messages and musical entertainment into less than three hours. It never stops to catch its breath, leading to an abrupt halt when it doesn't quite know how to get offstage.

The production that has moved into Chrysler Hall through Sunday is an impressive one that compares favorably with the Broadway edition. (Indeed, the three lead actresses played the same roles in New York.) It is blessed with an abundance of remarkable singing talent with not a weak link in the chain.

It looks sumptuous. John Lee Beatty's sets are closer to the fairy tale brightness of the movie version than the bleakness of the novel. It glories in yellows and the colors of sunset by Brian MacDevitt's lighting. Paul Tazewell's costumes, which evoke periods from 1904 into the 1940s are mood-enhancing.

It fleetingly touches all the bases of Alice Walker's 1982 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and the 1985 Steven Spielberg movie adaptation. It never has time to stop and let audiences savor, or experience, the fragrance of the titular purple vistas that bless the otherwise poverty-ridden residents of rural Georgia who sing its stories. It seems to know, after all, that it is dealing with matters that are not usually sung about this side of grand opera - rape, domestic abuse and racial violence. The score is a mixture of gospel, rock, rhythm and blues and narrative songs composed by three Broadway newcomers.

It has been called a singing version of a Reader's Digest condensed book. The alternative might have been to stick to the drama of Celie, the downtrodden, maligned woman who evolves from doormat to feminist icon. By keeping the supporting characters, mainly the women who helped her along the way, it throws a good deal into the stew, making it difficult to stir.

Miss Celie is at the center of things, even though she does not get any particularly good songs. Kenita R. Miller is both heartbreaking and eventually powerful in the evolution of a girl-woman whom we meet as the 14-year-old mother of two children fathered by a man she believes to be her father. Pronounced ugly and of no worth, she is shuffled off to Mister, a local farmer who needs a wife-slave to tend his house and mind his children "before they get old enough to kill him." He wants her younger, prettier sister, Nettie, but he settles for Celie, partially because a cow is thrown in as part of the bargain. Celie is a hard worker but gets periodic beatings anyway.

We are probably blessed that Fantasia, the "American Idol" sensation, abandoned the part before she got here. We are quite content with Miller and rejoice in the show's triumphant moment when she finally walks out on Mister - literally cheered by the audience.

It is regrettable, though, that what should have been her final triumphant showcase, "I'm Here," is no more than a traditional power song with the volume turned up.

In fact, Act 2 struggles under the burden of tying together all the plots. There are at least two false endings before the cast is left merely to converge onstage and proclaim that all is well.

Most questionable is the overly frantic last-moment redemption of Mister, a character who goes from dastardly villain to good citizen with a quickness that would be the envy of the season's other most persistent convert - Ebenezer Scrooge. Poor Rufus Bonds Jr. works hard, and with a fine voice, but can do little to enliven the role of the scowling husband, particularly when his big moment is yet another showcase aria. The audience is asked to sympathize with him only moments after they have cheered his put-down. Changes of mood this abrupt require time we don't have in this race to the curtain call.

The musical gets a boost with the arrival of a juke joint star named Shug Avery, who returns to town just in time to put some shimmy in the show. She was Mister's former love, and she becomes the life-affirming love of Celie in a depiction of lesbian openness that is much more obvious here than it was in the movie version.

Perhaps no mere actress could measure up to the extensive entrance provided for the character of Shug (except for Tina Turner, who was originally asked to play her in the movie version). Angela Robinson, though, certainly commands attention. Making the part her own, she presents Shug as a down-to-earth, entirely sympathetic businesswoman who knows that if she had Celie's inner beauty she wouldn't have to shake and grind to get attention. The show's best song, and the only one that could have been lifted from the score in pop charts, is the duet "What About Love?"

Felicia P. Fields brings the proper sass and defiance to Sofia, a hefty woman (defined as "just a big old heifer" by one of the other characters). This is the role played by Oprah Winfrey in the movie. Winfrey is now an invaluable promoter of this musical which, ironically, bears a kinship to "Precious," the new movie about a victimized black woman that is being given Oscar buzz - mainly by Oprah.

The character of Sofia, though, is the one most damaged by cuts. Her face-off with the mayor's wife, which lands her beaten and in jail, now takes place offstage. She gets the shows's most defiant, crowd-pleasing song, "Hell No," which was her reaction to the mayor's wife's suggestion that she work as her maid.

Stu James, as her combative young husband, Harpo, gets laughs and whistles when he appears, buffed and shirtless with enough oil to be a Mr. Universe contestant. The character of Harpo is less comedy relief than it was in the movie. Nettie (La Toya London) is the sister who is in Africa most of the time and, consequently, has little to do. The final reunion, which should be a big moment, is thrown away in the rush toward an end.

The African dance scene, thrown in to satisfy the formula as the big Act 2 opening, looks merely silly - like something lifted from "The Lion King."

This "Color Purple" carries the weight of its assignment with hurried narrative force. It is, by all accounts, the most fast-paced show in years. It has a great deal of story to tell and does it with rushed gusto.

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