It's got the soul of a survivor

By Jan Breslauer

Dec. 9, 2007 12 AM PT

Special to The Times

Many books are made into films, and a few into genuinely good ones. Other literary works are given a second life as musicals. But it is the rare novel that inspires both a movie and a successful musical.

Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” is one of the few.

Taking place over 40 years, from 1909 to 1949, in a small African American town in rural Georgia, Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book tells the story of poor Celie, a young girl who suffers through rape, putative incest, separation from her babies and sister, domestic violence and more. In the end, she finds her inner strength and is redeemed.

“I was very much in service to ancestors when writing the book,” says Walker, speaking from her home in Northern California. “I wanted very much to honor the absences on our soil. I was almost like a priestess when I was writing, someone in the role of responsibility of bringing this story to light.

“Until we understand the dynamics of those ancestors who were dragged here, until we really spiritually and emotionally get their struggles and triumphs and pains, it’s going to be impossible to deal with what we need to deal with in order to transform our society, which is in such desperate need of transformation.”

The novel was first published to acclaim in 1982. Three years later, the Steven Spielberg movie, starring Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey, was released. And the $10-million Broadway musical opened in 2005. Following stops in Chicago and San Francisco, the touring company, directed by Gary Griffin and with the original creative team, opens at the Ahmanson Theatre next Sunday.

Why has this story translated so well? And what makes it as relevant today as the day it was written?

“The epic scope of it has translated time and translated into different mediums,” says Harry Elam, the Olive H. Palmer professor in the humanities at Stanford. “It hits at central themes that are not just common to black women but cross-racial: endurance, faith, redemption, sisterhood. It’s dark, but the end is uplifting. The idea is that she triumphs, and endurance is the message.”

Serious staying power

It is unusual among recent Broadway fare in that it is not primarily comedic. “It is a show of real significance,” says Peter Schneider, producer of “The Lion King” and “Aida.” “It’s a good show, a fun show, but it’s about empowerment, about saying you can be somebody. It’s rare that a show comes along and says to people of nonwhiteness that you can be somebody.”

It took Scott Sanders, the driving force behind the musical, eight years to bring “The Color Purple” to Broadway. The process began in 1997, when Sanders, then president of Mandalay Television, mentioned to his colleague Peter Guber that he was interested in turning the book into a musical. Guber called Walker, who agreed to meet with the two men. And after a courtship that involved bringing Walker to New York to see Broadway shows, Sanders won her consent.

“I had gone through a lot having the movie made and had come out of that oftentimes sick and tired, though joyful about what we managed to create,” Walker recalls. “The young should especially know that when you write something you feel is a gift, and something the ancestors feel is a gift, you have to factor in the suffering. But the main thing here was Scott Sanders, who was not only persuasive and empathetic and brilliant in his thinking but also a good person, and that was so clear to me.”

What originally inspired Sanders was the book. “When I first read it, I was so moved by Celie, I couldn’t believe that anyone could be treated the way she was treated and then come out at the end as a completely evolved whole person who was able to forgive,” he recalls.

Many, including Walker, feel that the musical is closer to the book than the movie. “It is closer because the relationship between Celie and Shug is more explicit and joyful,” says the novelist. “I don’t feel they were able to go into the relationship in-depth in the film, though I deeply appreciate the tentative and precious kiss in the film. But in the play it’s so much more clear that they have an actual ongoing relationship.”

Perhaps because he had never produced a musical, Sanders was blissfully unaware of what others would see as an obstacle -- the serious tone of the story. “Naively, I don’t think I really thought about how challenging the story was,” he says. “Along the way, many people said, ‘Are you crazy? You can’t sing and dance that story.’ ”

But many saw a potential to reach an underserved audience through its deeply affecting story.

“It has the key ingredient for success: emotion, emotion, emotion. And the production is one of tremendous emotion and tremendous connection,” Schneider says. “I have such great respect for Scott, who has championed this piece for such a long time and has such faith in the power of this piece to move people.”

“Everyone who works with this story feels this pull and, whatever it is, the transformation,” confirms Walker. “I’ve experienced that with all the people I’ve worked with in developing it. They are so full of joy and devotion. It felt very holy.”

Then again, “The Color Purple” has always had its own magic, in all mediums. “We are blessed with a lot of synchronicity with these characters, with what happens, and people feel they have to step up to that,” says Walker. “The most obvious one was when they were trying to get Oprah to do the movie, and the character she was going to play opposite was named Harpo, which is her own name spelled backward.”

For a long time, Sanders, Quincy Jones and a few key others were the keepers of the faith. But at the 11th hour, they were joined by a high-profile fellow traveler. The $10-million show was ready to load in to the theater when Winfrey’s friend Gayle King persuaded the TV talk show host to invest. Sanders had all the money he needed at that point, but he made room for Winfrey to chip in a million, and the marquee was changed to read “Oprah Winfrey Presents ‘The Color Purple.’ ”

It opened on Broadway to mixed reviews, with the Wall Street Journal calling it “a comic-book version of Ms. Walker’s vastly overrated tale of oppression and hope in the Deep South.” “The critics did not gravitate toward it the way I would have liked,” Sanders says, “but the audiences did.”

Indeed, a critical portion of those audiences seems to have been drawn by Winfrey, who declined to be interviewed for this story. “Without any question, Oprah’s involvement positioned it globally,” says Sanders.

For the cast, she also provided inspiration. “Being a part of ‘The Color Purple’ was special, but that Oprah factor was icing on the cake,” says Jeannette Bayardelle, who plays Celie in the touring version and who for two years understudied 11 roles in the New York production. “I know all of our lives have been changed permanently.”

The question of who the audience would be was of no small significance. “Lots of people thought it was a black story,” Sanders says. “I can’t tell you how many people said, ‘I’m not going to invest because black people don’t come to the theater.’ ”

But apparently they do -- for the right show. “People in the black community were looking for ‘Here’s something on Broadway that’s telling a black story,’ ” Elam says.

While reports differ on the percentages, no one disputes that the show has attracted a significant number of African American theater-goers. “Bringing African Americans to the theater is something we’re incredibly proud of,” says Sanders, whose show has recouped its investment.

Elam compares the phenomenon to stage shows produced for African American audiences by Tyler Perry. “Tyler Perry’s audience overlaps with the audience for ‘The Color Purple.’ ” he says. “Perry made millions in the black urban circuit that reached a black audience that doesn’t care about reviews.”

That may be why the critics’ failure to embrace “The Color Purple” did not spell its demise. “The inner black audience is not listening to critics in the same way,” says Elam. “It’s not going to read the New York Times and decide whether to go.”

However, the demographics appear to have changed somewhat on the road. “On Broadway, we had a large, large number of African Americans in the audience,” says Bayardelle. “The audience is definitely different on the road, it’s a little more universal. They were more expressive, those early audiences.”

Ongoing relevance

“The Color Purple” survives and thrives despite changes in society. “I remember teaching the book when it first came out, and there was much excitement about it in terms of how it brought feminist politics together with race,” recalls Elam. “It spoke to the growth of the women’s movement at a time when they were starting to speak to issues of women of color.

“Labeling yourself a feminist now is certainly different than when the novel or movie came out. ‘The Color Purple’ now is not as wrapped up in either the racial or the feminist dynamics as much as the story it was telling and how it was telling it. So it’s the apolitics of somebody finding themselves that works now.”

The greater message transcends time. “Sometimes it is just a matter of having lived life and being ready,” Walker says. “But I also think there is a poignancy, an affirmation of how eternal love came to be, and how much faith people can have in each other -- when people see the relationship between the sisters Celie and Nettie -- that we are everything to each other and have to be in order to survive and flourish.”

Elam compares Walker’s achievement to that of another Broadway groundbreaker. “Lorraine Hansberry believed, to paraphrase, that the way you get to the universal -- I’d rather say cross-cultural, but she used ‘universal’ -- is to be very, very particular,” he says. “Dealing with this particular family in ‘A Raisin in the Sun’ in 1959 in that way is similar to the formula that Alice Walker used. What Alice did in terms of finding the particular was the triumphant struggle.”

And it may also be the wave of the future. Says Elam: “Thelma Golden curated a mid-’90s exhibit at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and in the catalog she talked about how ‘post-black’ is the new black -- the notion that free from the need to speak to the social-political dynamics of race, artists are free to talk about other things.

“Within that perspective, you can use a black woman to talk about the themes defining her inner strength. Even as a contemporary audience could look at ‘The Color Purple’ and say it’s beyond these concerns, it’s smack in the middle of them.”

‘The Color Purple’

Where: Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles

When: Opens next Sunday. 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sundays. Call for exceptions.

Ends: March 9

Price: $20 to $100

Contact: (213) 628-2772