"for coloured gurlz who've considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf," the ground-breaking Broadway play by Ntozake Shange is one of my top five favorite plays. It impacted me as a dramatist, as a woman, and as a human being. The seven women in the stage play, each named for a color in the rainbow represent the various hues of women's lives, relationships with men, and all of our pain, angst, hope, and love. It's choreopoem format is an artistic triumph and was perfected by my late brother, James, who used it and raised it to new heights in his body of work, two pieces of which, "Black Men Rising" and "Wimmin With Wings," were featured in last year's National African-American Theatre Festival a year almost to the day before his death. While Tyler Perry stands out as the king of the Chitlun Circuit plays with his over-the-top 'madeah' character, who's also featured in his successful but not quite exceptional movies, he is no cinematic genius which is what it would take to bring the poignancy and nuance, as well as the raw emotional impact of Shonge's ingenious script to the screen. After seeing the play numerous times, I don't want to see the Tyler Perry treatment of this ground-breaking dramatic work. This is not a melodrama that needs over-acting and cliched moments, typical of Perry's work. I'm really dismayed that a director worthy of this play didn't tackle it. First, my favorite musical, Evita, was ruined by Madonna singing all the songs off-key, the my second favorite, DreamGirls was reduced to a vehicle for Beyounce, and now this. Will somebody figure out how to film Broadway shows and show them in their original, artistic form?
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Gary Fandango
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Comments
I am uninspired to see it from his past movies also, very formulaic.
The problem with the movie are many. It would have been more effective to simply film the play as is. Not only does Tyler Perry put the women in a "Women of Brewster Place " setting. Not only does he add characters not in the original play, thereby creating too many storylines to develop fully and undercutting the audience's investment in the emotional lives of the women. This would have been bad enough in distorting the play for people who won't pick up the original. But Janet Jackson's character-- the woody, stiff, anal, cold successful rich bitch Perry has in all his movies who is married to a man who blames his (discovered) down lowness on her success was offensive on so many levels but most importantly it undermines the sense of agency and empowerment so central to the play. Jacksons character got what she deserved for her success was the message. Apparently in Perry's world one can only be a successful loving "together" woman if one stays poor. I find this offensive in all of Perry's version but importing it in this work is downright misogynistic. I know Shange has come out to support Perry and his version because it was a vehicle for mass distribution but I found this endorsement perplexing.
rated with hugs