Preview 2004-2005: Three Novels Turned Musicals
The novel's letters are from Celie to God, and from Celie to Nettie, with Nettie's letters to her sister hidden from Celie by her husband. Celie comes under the influence of such other characters as Sophia, the strong-willed wife of her husband's son, and Shug, a female blues singer and Albert's mistress.
In 1985, The Color Purple became a film directed by Steven Spielberg, featuring Whoopi Goldberg as Celie, Oprah Winfrey as Sophia, and Danny Glover as Albert. Nominated for eleven Academy Awards, The Color Purple failed to win any, and Spielberg was not even nominated. If the novel had been accused of depicting black men as abusive or weak, Spielberg was accused of prettifying a strong novel. Still, the film won wide acclaim and was a hit, allowing Walker's characters to reach a wider audience.
Among the bonuses on the DVD release of The Color Purple is a short called The Color Purple: The Musical, focusing on the contribution to the film of Quincy Jones's musical score. But this fall, The Color Purple actually becomes a musical, and it will begin, appropriately for Georgia native Walker, at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta. In terms of musicals, the Alliance is best recalled as the venue where the first incarnation of Disney's Aida was presented, under the title Elaborate Lives: The Legend of Aida.
The book for The Color Purple was initially in the hands of Regina Taylor Drowning Crow, but she was replaced by Marsha Norman, author of the books for The Secret Garden and The Red Shoes. Norman will be represented on Broadway this season with a revival of 'Night Mother. The Color Purple songs are by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis, and Stephen Bray, theatrical novices from the pop world.
Those involved in the Color Purple musical, which could be seen on Broadway in 2005, have admitted that, owing to the epistolary form of the novel, they have also secured the rights to the film and may be borrowing from its dramatic structure. Any number of musicals supposedly based on novels have borrowed heavily from the film versions without crediting the screenplay.
With LaChanze as Celie, The Color Purple will play the Alliance from September 9 to October 17. Other leading roles will be taken by Adriane Lenox, Felicia P. Fields, Saycon Sengbloh, and Kingsley Leggs. The cast of a 2004 workshop included Jesse L. Martin and 2004 Tony winner Anika Noni Rose. The director is Gary Griffin, who has established a reputation through his small-scale re-imaginings, in Chicago and elsewhere, of musicals like Pacific Overtures, My Fair Lady, and A Little Night Music. His New York credits include the staging of two of Encores!' best recent productions, The New Moon and Pardon My English. The choreographer is Avenue Q and All Shook Up's Ken Roberson.
Like The Secret Garden, the forthcoming musical A Little Princess is adapted from a novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett. And the musical will be directed by Susan H. Schulman, who directed The Secret Garden on Broadway. The music is by Andrew Lippa, who wrote the off-Broadway Wild Party and contributed songs to the Broadway revival of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. The book and lyrics are by Brian Crawley, who wrote off-Broadway's Violet with Jeanine Tesori.
A Little Princess plays a regional engagement at Palo Alto, California's TheatreWorks from August 18 through September 12. Young Mackenzie Mauzy has the title role, with Will Chase as her father and Kimberly King as the stern headmistress of the school where she is forced to become a servant.
Little Princess has been the basis for several films, including one with Shirley Temple 1939 and a 1995 version directed by Alfonso Cuarón. Just as Lippa had to contend with another version of The Wild Party playing on Broadway at the same time his was seen at the Manhattan Theatre Club, another musical version of The Little Princess is in the works. This one is entitled Princesses, with a score by David Zippel and Matthew Wilder, and it's aimed for Broadway in the fall of 2005. Princesses features a play-within-a-play in which contemporary Manhattan private-school girls put on a play based on the Burnett story.
In addition to The Little Princess, Schulman is also set to direct Little Women, based, of course, on the beloved Louisa May Alcott novel about the Civil War-era March family. This is the only one of today's trio of adaptations already set for Broadway this season, with an opening of January 20 at the Virginia Theatre.
In her first Broadway appearance since her Tony-winning title role in Thoroughly Modern Millie, Sutton Foster will play Jo, with Maureen McGovern as Marmee. Others mentioned for the cast include Danny Gurwin, John Hickok, Amy McAlexander, and Megan McGinnis.
The book is by Allan Knee, who also wrote the script for one of Broadway's worst musicals, Late Nite Comic, in 1987. The music is by Jason Howland, the lyrics by Mindi Dickstein. This Little Women will try out at Duke University in North Carolina in October.
Although this is apparently the first Broadway musical based on Little Women, it's by no means the first musicalization of the property. London's West End saw it as A Girl Called Jo in 1955. Richard Adler The Pajama Game, Damn Yankees wrote the songs for a 1958 CBS-TV musical version, featuring Jeannie Carson, Florence Henderson, Bill Hayes, and Rise Stevens. In 1964, it became an off-Broadway musical called Jo. And Mark Adamo's opera Little Women was recently seen at Houston Grand Opera and New York City Opera.
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