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Oprah Winfrey, having dug a million dollars from between her sofa cushions, has gotten into the Broadway producing racket. Crowds approaching the Broadway Theatre’s marquee from the south will read OPRAH WINFREY PRESENTS / THE COLOR PURPLE / A NEW MUSICAL, and from the north will see THE COLOR PURPLE / A NEW MUSICAL / PRESENTED BY OPRAH WINFREY. The reported seven-figure contribution she’s made to the musical, coupled with the bullhorn of her TV show, means no one need fear for this show’s finances. Yet commercial interests seem to have fallen well down the list of motivations here, at least for the creative team. Celie, the anguished protagonist of Alice Walker’s novel, is a poor black woman from Georgia confronting rape, incest, domestic violence, racism, and a hundred other traumas; there’s a serious edge to this story that would appeal to a talk-show host whose book club put nearly a million copies of Anna Karenina into print last year. Alas, Celie’s story also lends itself to a tone of bland uplift, and a bathetic daytime-TV sensibility clouds almost everything in the show. Even as Celie’s father gives her to the brutish Mister as collateral for a cow, you can imagine how the show’s joyous finale is going to sound. — Jeremy McCarter

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New York Magazine Reviews

• Jeremy McCarter's Full Review (12/12/05)