BWW Reviews: THE COLOR PURPLE, Menier Chocolate Factory, July 16 2013

It's long been my opinion that every musical should contain at least one song which gives a female performer the opportunity to belt her head off. Thankfully, many shows subscribe to this unwritten rule and those that don't... well, let's just say comments on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory's score might have been kinder had one of the girl Oompa Loompas been able to deliver a multi-octave power ballad.

Wicked has 'Defying Gravity'. Les Mis has 'I Dreamed A Dream' and Bonnie & Clyde has 'Dyin' Ain't So Bad' (if you don't know it, do look it up). But The Color Purple, the musical adaptation of Alice Walker's seminal novel, has got what might be my favourite of them all: 'I'm Here'. A song that builds from a quiet declaration of independence - "I don't need you to love me" - to a soaring finale, with a few mini-crescendos along the way, it left me thunderstruck when I chanced upon a touring production of the show in San Francisco several years ago and was the main reason I was so eager to catch this production at the Menier.

Its time comes, but before then we meet its singer Celie (Cynthia Erivo) and her sister Nettie (Abiona Amonua), soon separated by the leering and violent Mister (Christopher Colquhoun). What follows are essentially snapshots of the decades that follow, as we see Celie, mocked by Mister for being "black... poor... ugly... a woman" slowly start to believe in herself, thanks to strong role models like the fiercely proud Sofia (Sophia Nomvete) and to the sexual awakening brought on by the alluring Shug Avery (Nicola Hughes).

Direction and set design, both by John Doyle, are uncluttered. While the simplicity of the staging is sometimes distracting - a naked bath scene is lacking both nakedness and a bath - overall it lends focus to what is a fairly meandering plot. Admittedly, it's occasionally tricky to gauge the passing of time, but at no point is the trajectory of Celie's personal journey unclear, and rarely has there been a protagonist an audience seems happier to support than this one.

Celie is already a sympathetic character on paper, but Cynthia Erivo's performance here is a thing of wonder, with a voice so exquisite and a characterisation so warm that her every onstage moment is something special. Nicola Hughes as Shug Avery is comparably terrific, and while the two women first seem like a somewhat mismatched couple, when they sing ('What About Love?') the effect is remarkable. Sophia Nomvete too makes a huge, crowd-pleasing impact as Sofia, and the trio lead what is a very strong cast, albeit one in which the ladies consitently and quite appropriately outshine their male counterparts.

Let there be no doubt, though - the show belongs to its leading lady. When 'I'm Here' arrives late in the second act, the audience, completely enraptured, is rewarded with a delivery by Erivo so impasssioned that the tears fly off her face. (And should it be possible to take your eyes off her you'll see several audience members in a very similar state.)

As if that wasn't enough emotional upheaval for one night, mere moments later the finale swells into a gospel crescendo that is incredibly moving and left me in tears - it's a glorious high point and a fitting end to a show that celebrates the irrepressible power of self-belief, faith and the human spirit.

(And it has a lot of amazing belting.)

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