Color Purple Broadway

'Color Purple' still connects

What : HCA/TriStar Broadway at TPAC presents The Color Purple: The Musical About Love
When : 7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday ; 8 p.m. Friday;
2 and 8 p.m. Saturday; and
1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday.
Where : Tennessee Performing Arts Center’s Andrew Jackson Hall, 505 Deaderick St.
Tickets : $25-$70 through www.tpac.org/colorpurple, 782-4040 or the TPAC box office downtown or at The Mall at Green Hills concierge desk.
Contact : www.colorpurple.com

Speak with pretty much anyone who’s come in contact with The Color Purple: The Musical About Love and a common theme emerges. Each person — whether audience member, creative staff or actor — considers the story his or her own.

Never mind the fact that it follows a young African-American woman’s hard journey through various types of “enslavement” and abuse at the hands of others. Put aside that it easily could have been a story mired in pity and woe. Instead, the musical version of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel — which returns to TPAC this week — has been celebrated as a joyful triumph of spirit and self-discovery.

Set in post-Civil War Georgia, young Celie and those around her explore new definitions of freedom, carrying the hopes of anyone who has ever wished for more, for better — for love. And that list includes Oprah Winfrey, who played the role of no-nonsense Sofia in the 1985 Steven Spielberg movie and helped bring the musical to the stage; Scott Sanders, a lead producer who, though white and male, immediately identified with the story; Allee Willis, one of several award-winning composers/lyricists for the show; and members of the current touring cast.

“The story is so much a part of my philosophy of life,” admits Willis, the Grammy-winning songwriter, multimedia artist and director behind Earth, Wind & Fire’s September , the theme song to the TV show Friends and The Pointer Sisters’ Neutron Dance in addition to the musical. “It’s about believing in yourself, loving yourself, in spite of whatever limitations you might have. To me, this is a story about self-acceptance, and how that can impact all of the people around you.

Tony Awards 2011 | Broadway.com | People in the Picture Star Donna ...

If you need any proof that Donna Murphy loves a challenge, look no further than her Broadway resume. The versatile actress took home her first of two Best Actress Tony Awards in 1994 for creating the role of Fosca, a sickly, ugly and obsessive lover in Stephen Sondheim’s Passion . Two years later, she earned her second Tony as British schoolteacher Anna Leonowens in the revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein classic The King and I . She wowed audiences in Wonderful Town . In a demanding, time-traveling role, she plays Raisel/Bubbie, a 1970s grandmother who shares stories from her past as a star of Yiddish theater and film in pre-World War II Poland, including the difficult choices she made as the Holocaust loomed. Broadway.com caught up with this beloved star to talk about the challenges of being a working mom, why she never does anything twice and how Bubbie lured her back to Broadway. This part stayed with me from the time I read it. As a mother, I was so drawn to the idea of playing a mother and grandmother, of getting to see Raisel as a young woman before she has a child, and jumping back and forth in time to get a sense of the bigger picture of who she is and why she made the decisions she made. In the musical theater it’s not so common to write a character that complex. I’ve been blessed that I’ve had a chance to play a number of really interesting women in musical theater, like Lotte Lenya [ Lovemusik ] and Ruth Sherwood [ Wonderful Town ] and it’s probably no coincidence that I’m attracted to them. I’m looking for something I’ve never done before. What often happens is that you do something, and then the next thing you’re asked to do is similar, because people have seen you do it. They think, “Oh, she’s a Phyllis in Follies type, she’s arch and sophisticated and dry, and likes to dance with handsome young men on stage.” Well, I guess that part is true! But I don’t think there are any characters like this one. Seth Rudetsky said to me, “You know you’re doing the white Color Purple , right?” which cracked me up. Yes, it’s a younger and older version of a character, but it’s a very different kind of character and a very different setting. I couldn’t think of any character that I’d ever played, or ever seen, really, that has a journey like Bubbie’s.