Listen & Be Heard Weekly Archives

THE COLOR PURPLE at the Orpheum Theatre through December 9th.
THE BLUEST EYE at the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre through November 11th.

(left to right:) Rufus Bonds, Jr., Jeannette Bayardelle, and Kimberly Ann Harris, Virginia Ann Woodruff and Lynette DuPree. Photo Credit: Paul Kolnik

The Bay area is graced with two new plays — one a musical and the other a powerful drama –about loss of self, survival, and the transforming nature of love.

San Francisco’s Orpheum Theatre is the venue for Oprah Winfrey Presents The Color Purple, in its west coast premiere. Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Alice Walker was onstage after the first show to receive a plaque from the Mayor’s office. Walker’s 1982 novel was groundbreaking, and so was the Steven Spielberg film version starring Whoopi Goldberg as Celie and Oprah Winfrey as Sofia.

(left to right:) Jeannette Bayardelle and LaToya London
Photo credit: Paul Kolnik

The Lorraine Hansberry Theatre’s new season opened with The Bluest Eye, adapted from Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison’s first novel. Before the performance, the audience was overjoyed to hear that negotiations between the theatre and its new landlord, the Academy of Art College, were productive and the theatre will continue at its present location.

The cast for The Color Purple does not disappoint — Jeannette Bay Ardelle as Celie, Felicia Fields as Sofia, Michelle Williams (of Destiny’s Child) as the glamorous Shug Avery, and Rufus Bonds Jr. as Mister. Stu James is a knockout as Harpo, and the interaction between him and his voluptuous wife Sofia is marvelous. The “church ladies,” a trio of gossipy observers in colorful hats, are a delight due to musical ability and barbed humor.

The Bluest Eye was adapted for the stage by Lydia Diamond and is directed by Walter Dallas, the artistic director of the Freedom Theatre in Philadelphia. Toni Morrison, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved and the prestigious Nobel Prize for her body of work, has said “The search for love and identity runs through most everything I write.” Her eleven-year old character, Pecola Breedlove, is reaching puberty in 1940′s Ohio when we first meet her in The Bluest Eye. Lydia Diamond points out that Pecola and her family are affected in every direction by the dominant American culture that says to them, “You’re not beautiful; you’re not relevant; you’re invisible; you don’t even count.”

Live music heightens the impact of this short, powerful drama, along with a haunting song recorded by Nina Simone. Music, dance and storytelling sequences illustrate the challenge of incorporating internally the messages telegraphed by a racially schizophrenic society. Toni Morrison begins The Bluest Eye with text from a Dick and Jane primer, and the director uses this most effectively in the play. The excellent cast includes Shanique Scott as Pecola, Carla Punch as Claudia, Nocole Harley as Darlene/Frieda, Kieleil Deleon as Cholly, Vernon Medearis as Daddy/Soaphead Church, and Tamiyka White as Mrs. Breedlove.