A scene from the original production of The Color Purple.(Photo by Paul Kolnik)
By Hap Erstein
Eight-time Jefferson Award-winning director Gary Griffin made his Broadway debut six years ago with the musical adaptation of Alice Walker’s beloved epistolary novel, The Color Purple, a runaway hit now on its second national tour, completing a week’s run at the Kravis Center on Sunday.
Although this story of Celie, a young black girl raped and impregnated by her father and separated from her sister, had already been turned into a 1985 Oscar-nominated film by Steven Spielberg, to Griffin the appeal was the original material.
The attraction, he says, “was Alice’s book and the fact that I knew we were going to go into territory that would be fresh and original. We would have to. If you’re going to make a musical of ‘The Color Purple,’ you’re going to have to take a fresh, original approach with song and dance and theatrical choices.”
By the time Griffin joined the project, playwright Regina Taylor (Crowns) was writing the script, but it was not meshing with the work of pop composers Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray, who would be making their musical theater debuts.
“I think their visions were different and I think we had to look at which one to continue with,” says Griffin. “You do that all the time when creating shows. You have choices and you have to decide which route to take. So the producers and I had to say that it was better to change that role in the team, rather than spending our time getting them to write the same show.”
So out went Taylor and in came Marsha Norman, Tony-winning adapter of The Secret Garden.
As she explains, “I’m from Kentucky, I’m a woman, a writer who is able to live in the commercial world but also in the serious world. I want to entertain, but with ideas and emotions. I always felt that ‘The Color Purple’ was not this terrible, dire tragedy, but this story of how this girl survives, stronger for it all.
“In the book, (Celie’s) a pretty passive character for a long time, so that had to change. She had to grow before our eyes and had to end up a different person by the end of the show.”
Norman never doubted that this story could be turned into a musical. “The language of the novel was actually quite musical,” she says. “When the emotions run as high as they do in this story, that‘s when you have a musical, I’d say.”
In addition to making Celie a more active character, Norman’s other main chore was deciding what was expendable from the lengthy novel.
“Well, how to tell 40 years worth of story in an evening, that ultimately is the main challenge,” she says. “One of the things we had to figure out was how to deal with white people. And our ultimate solution was to cut them out. There’s the mayor’s wife and the mayor and the African colonials, we had to come to grips with the fact that it’s not about them. They always get to be onstage. This time, they don’t.”
And she had to determine what she needed that wasn’t there already. “We also added in the community, this great vibrant world where people are watching each other all the time and looking out for each other, keeping track of who’s doing what to whom,” says Norman. “We added those church women who are like a Greek chorus, as a way of commenting, talking, gossiping, in a most classical way.”
The show that eventually emerged, while necessarily dramatic and intense, has a through line of love. “I tried to be sure that everything had a universal core, that the characters were all acting out of love,” Griffin says. “Even the darkest, most scary scenes have to do with love or not getting love.”
Unlike many, Griffin is not critical of Spielberg’s film and its well-polished visuals. “I think he took a very respectful view of the characters. He understood how to get that story to an audience that probably wouldn’t see it otherwise.
“It’s a beloved story and it should be beloved. And I think everybody has a feeling about how they want it expressed. I know there are people who wish the musical were more like the movie,” Griffin says. “And so it was a balancing act all the time, of being sure the audience understood the impact of what was going on, but pointing them towards the resilience of the characters to get them to the next moment.”
The show breaks from the images of the movie in its beginning moments. “It opens with a musical montage that does everything that a musical’s opening number should do,” says Griffin. “It tells you why it’s a musical, it gives you an introduction to the characters, it gives you a taste for the kind of score that you’re going to hear, and propels you into the world of the piece.”
As the musical evolved, Pulitzer Prize-winner Walker was on the scene, but she never pulled rank about the way her story was being retold. “She was fantastic,” says Griffin. “She would respond occasionally to things she would see that she questioned, but she was never demanding of ‘this must change.’ She liked the musical a lot so she was nothing but helpful and supportive.”
Also instrumental in the show gaining credibility was a producer who came on the scene – Oprah Winfrey.
“Clearly the stamp of approval for whatever they make in America is Oprah,” says Norman. “But the fact is that this story meant so much to her. When she did the movie, she wasn’t famous enough to get on the poster. She feels very strongly that that is her story, at least emotionally. As does much of the audience by the end of it.”
The show opened in Atlanta in the summer of 2004 and was immediately embraced by audiences, but Griffin knew it was a long way from being ready for Broadway.
“It needed clarification and focus. It needed to do its job with more power, to be more assertive,” he says, scoffing at the suggestion that the show was ever in trouble. “I made adjustments and worked on the show and experimented with different approaches to the scenes and the show evolved over time. I’ve been around troubled out-of-town tryouts and this really wasn’t one of them. I think that only happens when people panic.”
The Color Purple opened on Broadway on Dec. 1, 2005, to mixed responses. “I think the pure musical theater audience was challenged by it because it was a score written by pop writers. Some people had issues with that, which we could do nothing about,” Griffin concedes. “But there were a lot of people who really understood it and got it, who came in skeptical and were surprised at how affecting it was.”
The show ran a little over two years in New York, and has been touring the country, drawing standing ovations ever since. Asked what he thinks the show taps into, Griffin says, “It’s the kind of church we want to go to. If you love church already, you’re gonna love it. If you don’t think you love church, this might change your mind. Because in church, a lot of time, we go and we sing and we hear a great story.
“And if the story is told well, it helps us figure out the problems we have in our lives. Then we can come to this place together and celebrate it, celebrate our struggles,” he said.
“I think that’s why it’s great. It’s a good visit to a church.”
THE COLOR PURPLE, Kravis Center, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach. Through Sunday. Tickets: $25 and up. Call: (561) 832-7469 or (800) 572-8471.