Another Broadway musical that shares a title and subject matter with a famous film, except this time the two actually
do come from the same source, Alice Walker's novel
The Color (sic)
Purple. Spanning several decades of the 20th century it first introduces its heroine Celie (Cynthia Erivo) in 1914 at the age of 14, already pregnant for the second time as a result of being raped by her stepfather, both children taken away to mysterious ends. She's soon married off to the tyrannical widower Mister (Christopher Colquhoun,) mainly to raise his kids. Celie is a mousy creature whose only experience of how women should behave to men is cowering obedience, so behaves accordingly to the fearsome Mister, who soon bans her from ever again contacting her beloved sister Nettie (Abiona Omonua.) But over the years she meets other women with a much more independent attitude, and over the years she blossoms.
