THE COLOR PURPLE
Jeannette in the role of Celie
The Cadillac Theartre, Chicago, IL
www.colorpurple.com

Thu, June 28 1pm
JP Morgan Chase Luncheon celebrating Black music

Fri, June 29 8:20 Tom Joyner Sky Show - live from the Chicago Theatre (Jeannette and Michelle Williams perform "What About Love")

Mon, July 2 at 6pm
Taste of Chicago Concert.
Will air on Fox, My Network and WPVR TV on July 3 & 4

Sun Oct 14 12pm
Sing National Anthem at Chicago Bears game

Star is magnet in 'Purple'; Actress Jeannette Bayardelle is reason
Chicago Sun-Times, May 6, 2007 by Hedy Weiss

Beyond all else, the musical version of "The Color Purple" is a reminder that the greatest epics are those based on the amazing arc of a single life. And even if that life belongs to a woman like Celie, the central figure in Alice Walker's story -- a woman who is told time and again that she is poor, black and ugly, and that she is little better than the lowliest beast of burden -- it has the potential to blossom into something of enormous beauty, grace and complexity.

Both Walker's novel, initially published in 1982, and the subsequent film it inspired have reached vast audiences -- far wider than any Broadway production can ever hope to attract. But when live actors breathe their hearts and souls and last ounce of energy into this story -- as they certainly did Thursday night at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, where the show's national touring production made its mightily impressive debut -- the full wonder of what can be packed into four decades or more of a life (and three hours of visceral drama) becomes fully evident. So does the sense that this story might very well have found its ideal incarnation as a musical.

With a book by Marsha Norman and a beautifully crafted score by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray that carries us along in time by means of subtly shifting musical styles (field songs, blues, gospel, honky-tonk and swing), the show covers an enormous amount of ground. Like August Wilson's plays, it conjures a completely self-contained black world -- one where the brutal treatment of women tragically seems part of the fabric of life.

It is possible to argue over many aspects of the musical's overall structure -- from the way it hits you right off with a roof- raising Sunday church sequence rather than letting you ease your way quietly into the darkest heart of the story, to the way it strains to find redemption for the wife-beating Mister, to the way it tacks on an anticlimactic finale in the wake of Celie's breathtaking anthem, "I'm Here," a song that says everything that needs to be said. But director Gary Griffin has improved on many small moments since the show's Broadway debut. And in Jeannette Bayardelle, he has found an actress whose titanic performance as Celie is reason enough to grab hold of a ticket. Bayardelle is nothing short of astonishing.

Set primarily in Georgia -- and spanning the years 1909 to 1949 - - "The Color Purple" follows Celie from age 14, when she gives birth to her second child born of rape and agrees to marry the emotionally cruel and physically brutal Mister (Rufus Bonds Jr.), if only to save her beloved younger sister, Nettie (LaToya London), from that terrible fate.

Though isolated, humiliated and forced to work like a slave, Celie somehow retains an innate goodness that never betrays her. She is awed by her stepson's wife, Sofia (Felicia P. Fields, who, in a reprisal of her Tony-nominated portrayal, gets the audience on her side just by marching across the stage with all the fervor of a woman who will not be broken by any man).

But Celie is wholly transformed by Shug Avery (Michelle Williams, formerly of Destiny's Child, who scores big points here for her understated acting and fine comic timing). Shug, the juke joint singer and man-magnet who comes to visit Mister -- the man who has been her lifelong passion -- unexpectedly ends up being the source of Celie's liberation.

Yet when all is said and done, Bayardelle is the real magnet here -- moving seamlessly from adolescent girl to gray-haired matriarch, and along the way capturing her character's fierce determination, uncanny innocence, impressive forbearance and abiding sense of wonder. Whether laying on hands to heal others, venting her anger at God, finding forgiveness, or responding to the first flickers of true love, Bayardelle makes us feel Celie from the inside out. And she has one of those galvanic voices that can convey emotion in a unique way.

Hats off, too, to the irresistibly gossipy chorus of Church Ladies (Kimberly Ann Harris, Virginia Ann Woodruff and Lynette Dupree), to Sofia's boyish man, Harpo (Stu James), and to music director-conductor Sheilah Walker.

John Lee Beatty's sets and Paul Tazewell's painterly lighting have some of the same silhouetted beauty found in the work of the African-American artist Kara Walker. While Tazewell's costumes are more couture than dirt poor rural South, they have great eye appeal.

"Dear God," writes the 14-year-old Celie. "Maybe you can give me a sign letting me know what is happening to me." This show does her bidding.