Broadway can trivialize anything, even an epic drama about a crippled black community post-Reconstruction. The 2005 musical adaptation of The Color Purple came to Chicago for the first time last week, backed by the muscle of the country’s black luminaries, including Oprah Winfrey and Quincy Jones. But even that pedigree of hype can’t save this production from ending up like most Broadway transplants: a cheap, loud simplification of its source material.
Although this Color Purple painstakingly condenses every detail of Alice Walker’s novel into a brief three hours, it is creatively divorced from the spirit of both the original novel and Spielberg’s masterful 1985 film adaptation. The hokey show tunes stamp out the worn, weary texture of black life in early-1900s Georgia, turning what was once a story of quiet tragedy into a Disney parade through a lavish Deep South theme park.
Rather than imagine Celie’s painful journey through the rich musical history of African-Americans coming out of slavery, the creators pander to Broadway audiences who have been lobotomized by the soaring falsettos and exaggerated yelps in soundtracks to Rent and Wicked. Characters speak in the vernacular of the period—“Who this, Pa?”—only to then jump into soaring anthems of inspiration and uplift (from “Somebody Gonna Love You” to “What About Love?”).
Make no mistake: In the world of Broadway, dazzling showmanship overrides any commitment to cultural authenticity. The creators’ idea of “setting the scene” includes the occasional gospel interlude or a trumpet sounding in the background. At one point a character actually breaks into a Motown style of singing, an unsettling indication that the creators are only interested in alluding to some vague mainstream conception of “black music,” with total disregard for the quirks and intricacies that make up the culture they attempt to portray.
This cultural flattening becomes dangerously stereotypical when the story jumps to Africa, where Celie’s sister Nettie helps a group of Christian missionaries. The musical envisions this sequence—in classical Broadway style—with a flock of black people flailing their arms animalistically and wearing vibrant purple tutus. This Color Purple conflates the exotic (poor Southern black life and African tribes) with the conventional (Broadway show tunes and ballet) in order to make the story more digestible for the mainstream—in essence, a narrative and cultural whitewashing.
It speaks volumes that in press notes the musical even tags itself as a “family saga,” an innocuous descriptor for a story about the hardships of African-Americans and the searing legacy of slavery. Broadway thrives on the comforts of exaggerated melodrama and “inspirational” uplift; at one point the audience holds its breath as a father steals his daughter’s baby, only to then cheer raucously as a sassy, fat black woman bonks her abusive husband on the head. This cartoonish approach kills the art of Alice Walker’s book, leaving any serious confrontation of its subject matter in the wake of its “soaring and joyful” presentation. Evidently, that’s what happens to a great piece of fiction when “Oprah Winfrey presents.”