It's Thursday, and that means our peripatetic theater critic, J. Wynn Rousuck, joins Tom in Studio A to review one of the region's many new stage productions. Today, Judy's talking about the newly-revived traveling production of the Tony-Award-winning The Color Purple: The Musical, whose six-day run at The Hippodrome Theatre in Baltimore continues until this Sunday, October 22.
The musical draws liberally from both Alice Walker’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning 1982 novel of the same name and from Steven Spielberg's multi-Oscar-nominated 1985 film adaptation (starring Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover and Oprah Winfrey). The Color Purple tells the poignant four-decade-long story of Celie and Nettie, two sisters who triumph over sexual abuse, incest, racism and heart-breaking separation and loss.
The original musical production of The Color Purple ran on Broadway from 2005 to 2008, earning 16 Tony nominations, including nods to the book by playwright Marsha Norman and the music and lyrics of Brenda Russell, Ailee Willis and Stephen Bray. In 2013, director John Doyle "reimagined" the show, and his revival took Broadway by storm. It ran from 2015 until this past January (2017), and earned the 2016 Tony for Best Musical Revival. Doyle's at the helm again with this new national touring version of his Broadway hit.
The Color Purple: the Musical continues at the Hippodrome Theatre in Baltimore until Sunday, October 22nd.
