Urban Musical Theatre at TPAC
From South Pacific to South Georgia: The Color Purple
In 1949, only a few years after the casualties of World War II, the famed team of Rodgers and Hammerstein premiered a musical that dealt courageously with controversial issues of war outside the US and the dangers of prejudice inside American hearts. Now, nearly 75 years later, only a few years after massive protests about the dangers of prejudice in American hearts, the new team at Urban Musical Theatre has performed a musical that deals courageously with a controversial book on issues of war inside an American community.
This performance of The Color Purple, premiered in Atlanta, produced on Broadway by Oprah Winfrey, et al, and licensed through Theatrical Rights Worldwide, occurred to a nearly sold-out crowd on Saturday evening November 15, 2025. Five minutes before start of show, it didn’t seem as if the “sold-out” part would be the case, with huge swaths of empty seats apparent throughout the orchestra level. But at 7:35 pm, the competent and courteous TPAC staff quickly seated the sudden influx of last-minute theatregoers resulting in only a minimal delay. After a lively welcome by announcer/artistic director Dee DuVall, the purple curtains rose.
For Nashville, Urban Musical Theatre, headed by Executive Director Trina Dingle produced the finely crafted musical that joins an impressive list of works in recent years chronicling the American experience. Much like South Pacific, this show is set in in wartime: one during World War II battle fronts in the Pacific south and the other during a more personal series of battles in the American South.
The story traces the life of Celie beginning in her early teen years through her arduous path of drudgery and unrelenting abuse—including cruel separation from her children, beloved sister, and her one love interest, toward ultimate liberation, independence, and a measure of happiness. It is based Alice Walker’s powerful work, which inspired two award-winning films and this musical.
Winner of both the Nobel Prize and National Book Award in fiction in 1983, the book is both celebrated and controversial, one of the most commonly challenged works for those advocating book bans. In addition to its descriptions of physical, emotional and sexual violence against women, and implied incest, not to mention a lesbian relationship, some parents also object to its use of black vernacular, profanity, and some characters who challenge the will of God in their miserable lives.
Given this, my sole issue with the musical is the imbalance between the gut-wrenching pain in the book and the musical’s overemphasis on the positive, the cheerful, the humorous. Audiences who have not read the book or are able to separate the musical from the book are more likely to consider this musical in two acts a more complete success.
Yet, however understated or simply alluded to, the writer Marsha Norman and director Dee DuVall still include aspects of the heartbreak. The opening with two young girls, Celie and Nettie, playing patty cake, for example, would seem unremarkable, except Celie, barely in her teens, is heavily pregnant with her second child. Later, Mister’s entry, asking to court Nettie but agreeing to accept Celie while carrying a whip, is effective. And when we see Celie’s friend Sofia in jail, we have not witnessed her severe beating, but seeing the once jubilant woman sitting cowed, slumped over, and silent, shows her suffering. 
In addition to the actors’ skilled body language, Nicholas Owens’s choreography effectively depicts widely diverse scenes in the aisles of a church, down the road to a juke joint, and across the ocean into West Africa. Avoiding colorless imitation, he and his talented dance crew reveal distinctive references to those traditions in the raised arms and stamping feet of the churchgoers, the swivelling hips of the juke joint patrons, and the bent waists and shuffling bare feet of the Africans. And similar to the Martha Graham Dance Company’s 2025 production of Appalachian Spring, also held in TPAC’s Polk Theater, the minimalist sets and basic, but appropriate, costuming leant robust support to the story.
Most effective of all, however, was the use of the three Church Ladies (Carleen Reynolds, TaShia Smith, Donequa Glascoe). With each change of costume and affect, they serve as a movable feast of Greek choruses, appearing in each stage of the story: capped by fancy netted fascinators for church scenes, glittery dresses in the joint, and swatches of kente cloth for African scenes, their bright personalities and skintight harmonies stitched the episodes together seamlessly.
Celie, quite well-acted by Jasmine Elliott, used her body expertly, initially beaten into what seemed like permanent subservience, but gradually finding her voice and straight posture through the examples of Harpo’s wife Sofia and Shug Avery, the woman Mister dreams of. Elliott cleverly saved the power of her thrilling voice until the cri de coeur “Dear God” midway through Act I. Many Broadway belters cannot help but let loose too early, but she had the control to put the story above the ego. Similarly skilled as Harpo, Marcus Elliott used a recurring goofy chuckle and horse-pawing leg movements as comic relief while his character transformed from mindless aping of his father’s misogyny to faithful expressions of his sincere love for Sofia.
But this is, after all, a music. Among the most moving songs was “Our Prayer” a duet for Celie and Nettie and “What About Love?” a duet for Celie and Shug, the first non-family member who ever showed Celie both emotional and physical affection. But in addition to “Dear God” the showstopper was “Hell No!” an ensemble piece where Sofia (played by Urban Musicals talent director Kila J. Adams) confidently sings of just how much crap she is willing to take, which is exactly none.
Like its famed predecessor, South Pacific, this musical deals with troubling racial, gender, and religious issues peculiar to the American experience. Color Purple also has a happy ending as Celie is reunited with the children she had thought dead and with her sister to whom she had written letters for forty years, letters Mister had kept hidden with letters to her from Nettie in Africa. And like the team Logan, Rogers, and Hammerstein for South Pacific, Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray, the musical team of The Color Purple created a lively, thought-provoking evening’s entertainment perfect for Nashville’s interactive audience. Example? When Celie pronounces “If God ever listened to a poor colored woman the world would be a different place,” there were head nods and shouts of “AMEN!” all over the theater, including the gay white male couple seated right in front of me. When we realized how many people agreed, the nods and shouts became companionable chuckles.
Both these excellent musicals are quintessentially American, using American subjects, American musical genres, ultimately, highlighting American optimism and determination to survive.
Although The Color Purple has left Nashville, you should check out Urban Musical Theatre for future tours, and there are other great shows at TPAC forthcoming during the holiday season, including Die Hard: A Christmas Carol in the Johnson Theater, Nutcracker in Jackson Hall, and It’s a Wonderful Life in Polk Theater. Happy Holidays!
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Y Kendall is a Stanford-educated musicologist, specializing in dance history who recently earned an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Columbia University, studying nonfiction writing with Ben Ratliff and Margo Jefferson. Kendall’s diverse works have been published in Alchemy: Journal of Translation, Columbia Journal, Mitos Magazín, The Hunger Mountain Review, and The Salt Collective, among others. Born and raised in Tennessee, Kendall now lives near Nashville, freelancing as a flutist and writer, while caregiving for relatives.
