Purplexed

Went to see The Color Purple at the Civic Center last night. I was actually thinking it was a couple weeks from now but luckily my phone calendar reminded me in the morning. It was the show that I was least looking forward to in this years package...because I really am not one who enjoys going into a play, show, or movie knowing it is going to be a downer. If it ends up that way (like the movie Kids), that is one thing...but if I know it is going to be depressing I have a harder time getting into it. For that reason, I had never watched Schindler's List until a few months ago. I read the book, The Color Purple, about 20 years ago and although I didn't remember a ton of it, I remember that it was pretty much a bummer. I have never seen the movie.

The show did have a little bit of the rape, incest, and beating...all in musical form! but it really didn't seem a huge part of the show. It seemed lacking on the whole point of surviving through hardships but still learning to see the beautiful parts of life. The message was still there but it didn't seem as important. Celie's whole struggle seemed not as horrible as I remember, it often seemed like she was putting up with minor inconveniences than life shaping violence. It was a decent show but it didn't have the gravity that I remember in the book. It left me a little bit perplexed.

I also didn't get the sense of time. The book covers like 40+ years. The play didn't give nearly that sense of time frame. It seemed most of it could have been 5 years at the most. It just didn't give me the sweeping epic feeling like Les Miserables does.

A good show though, I would recommend it to people. I kind of wanted to get a "Hell No" t-shirt, just so I would have a t-shirt that said "Hell No" but I didn't care for the TCP logo on the sleeve...and $25 was a little spendy for a black t-shirt. Now, if it said "Hells Yeah!", I would be in.