Review: ‘The Color Purple' renews its Chicago welcome at the Goodman Theatre

Chicago Tribune

10 hours ago

Chicago loves Celie, Sofia and Shug Avery, and has embraced 'The Color Purple,' the 2005 Broadway musical based on both the beloved Alice Walker novel of strife, resilience and triumph in rural Georgia and the romantically hued Steven Spielberg movie for more than 20 years. So its warmly received return at the Goodman Theatre on Monday night felt very much like a well-fitting pair of Miss Celie's pants.
The original Broadway production, directed by our own Gary Griffin and featuring our own Felicia P. Fields, opened its first national tour at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, staying for months in 2007; I remember watching Oprah Winfrey, a co-producer, go backstage in a heady era when the rise of Barack Obama was making Chicago feel like the epicenter of a hopeful world.
The tour soon returned here, followed by a new tour of the 2015 Broadway revival, and then local stagings aplenty followed, at the Mercury Theater and the Drury Lane in Oakbrook Terrace, to name but two. I reviewed the pre-Broadway tryout of this show in Atlanta (where, improbably, it did not have an all-Black cast) and, all in all, I've seen the work of book writer Marsha Norman and songwriters Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray at least a dozen times. The great Willis, who co-wrote both 'September' and 'Boogie Wonderland' for Earth, Wind & Fire, died in 2019, although the Goodman Theatre program seems to think she is still alive. Only through her music, alas.
That 2019 Drury Lane production was directed by Lili-Anne Brown, who also staged this show at the MUNY in St. Louis in 2022 and who is in charge again this summer on Dearborn Street.
The Goodman's production uses much the same group of talent from that 2019 Drury Lane staging, including set designer Arnel Sancianco, costume designer Samantha C. Jones, music director Jermaine Hill and choreographer Breon Arzell and also many of the actors, including (among others) Gilbert Domally (as Harpo), Sean Blake (Ol Mister) and Nicole Michelle Haskins, who appeared both in Oakbrook Terrace and now downtown as Sofia. No wonder Brown brought back Haskins; she's a consummate, powerhouse Sofia.
The newcomers are mostly Chicago-based and Chicago-raised talent, including Brittney Mack ('Six') as Celie, the former Black Ensemble Theater star Aerie Williams, a fine vocalist, as the Shug whom everybody loves, and Evan Tyrone Martin, ranging far from his wheelhouse as Mister, the abusive husband who eventually embraces redemption.
It's fair to say that the Goodman staging uses a similar aesthetic palette as the prior suburban production, a presentational, relatively minimalist staging that keeps houses and cars off stage, suggests rather than builds a juke joint and wisely avoids bucolic, Spielberg-esque vistas of purple flowers. This matches the trajectory, really, of this particular musical, a show that has some structural limitations and has come to be be seen as most effective in a minimalist, almost concert-style staging, even though it started out very differently.
After all, this is a musical based on an epistolary novel, driven by letters sent between Celie, trapped in an early 20th century world of impoverished Black hurt and her beloved Nettie (Shantel Renee Cribbs), driven away from that world in order to survive.
For all the similarities, though, this is a vastly improved staging, filled with stellar singing and a more robust confidence. Over time, Brown and Hill clearly have figured out to deepen the mostly pop melodies in this score, a catchy and accessible song suite, to fit their vision of a more soulful interpretation, closer to the Black church than Top 40. And, this time, they have the singers who can follow through with their ideas.
Mack's intensely focused performance suggests she long has been waiting for this particular role. She sings it superbly, which is no surprise, but her work in Act 1 is most striking in how intensely she captures the capturing of a wonderful young woman by a pair of brutally abusive men, and how she manifests the physical trauma that evokes. It's a rich and empathetic performance and it is, of course, key to the success of the production.
I have my quibbles. The musical and dramatic tempos in Act 2 drag some and I don't care for how Sofia gets blocked by Celie for most audience members in the crucial dinner-table scene where she literally comes back to life by what both Walker and Norman imply is by the grace of God. I felt that way in 2019 and that scene is staged much the same. (I also still miss the much larger original orchestrations, although 'The Color Purple' now is often and effectively staged with eight musicians, as is the case at the Goodman.)
But the heart of the show beats here with intensity. Martin has probably the hardest job on the stage and he's surely more comfortable with where Mister goes than where he begins. But he and Brown also don't shy away from the pain behind his journey.
Mack and Haskins operate with great gravitas and, just as importantly, Brown always includes the audience in the storytelling, more than I've seen before with this title. And at least on opening night, the response proved that is the way to go with this show.
Review: 'The Color Purple' (3.5 stars)
When: Through Aug. 3
Where: Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St.
Running time: 2 hours, 50 minutes
Tickets: $33-$143 at 312-443-3800 and goodmantheatre.org