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'Color Purple,' the musical, comes to Arsht

Celie, the central character in Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Color Purple , lives a life most folks would consider unendurable.

A poor black girl who grows up in Georgia in the early 1900s, she's still a young teenager when she gives birth to two babies fathered by the man she thinks is her father, babies he takes away right after they're born. She is traded, along with a cow, to a cruel widower with kids, a farmer who abuses her verbally and physically, a man so determined to deny Celie any joy that he hides years' worth of loving letters from the sister who left to work as a missionary in Africa.

Yet Celie does endure, finds love, reclaims her life and her family. Walker's powerful tale of trial and triumph has sparked the imaginations of uncounted readers, the millions who saw Steven Spielberg's Oscar-nominated 1985 film of The Color Purple -- and, since 2005, the nearly two million theatergoers who have gone on Celie's journey in its newest form as a Broadway musical

Year in Review | Theater

Just before actor-artistic director Avi Hoffman pulled the plug on Boca Raton's New Vista Theatre Company, the leaders of two of the region's most celebrated companies revealed plans to relocate. Joseph Adler will move GableStage into the to-be-rebuilt Coconut Grove Playhouse, and Louis Tyrrell will take Florida Stage north to West Palm Beach's Kravis Center for the Performing Arts.

Providing some of the year's best theatergoing experiences were Les Miserables at Actors' Playhouse, Marco Ramirez's BroadSword at Mad Cat Theatre Company, Theresa Rebeck's Mauritius at New Theatre, David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow and Neil LaBute's Reasons To Be Pretty at GableStage, Sarah Ruhl's Dead Man's Cell Phone and Tom Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll at Mosaic Theatre. And Erik Fabregat, who was fabulous as a Moliere-inspired Elvis in Mad Cat's Viva Bourgeois and a Looney Tunes interrogator in Mosaic's Why Torture Is Wrong .

TOP FIVE

Magical 'Phantom' pairing coming back to Broward

The famous musical has run longer than any show in Broadway history, more than 9,100 performances and counting. Its director has been honored with 21 Tony Awards, way more than any other individual.

Longevity and quality say something significant about a show and its creators.

So it comes as no surprise that The Phantom of the Opera , the Andrew Lloyd Webber megamusical that launched the Broward Center for the Performing Arts almost 19 years ago, is coming back around for a long holiday run, its fourth at the Fort Lauderdale theater. And that the show and its celebrated director, Harold ``Hal'' Prince, have proven a magical pairing in the nearly 23 years since Prince staged the London world premiere of the musical that became a phenomenon.

Will Tampa's snazzy update of 'Alice in Wonderland' make it to Broadway?

The journey to that musical-theater pinnacle known as Broadway is full of obstacles, detours and delights, at least as many as Lewis Carroll's young heroine Alice encountered on her famous trip to Wonderland.

In Tampa this month, a team of inventive dreamers is hoping that a fresh take on a familiar story will get them to Broadway and beyond, giving the world a new musical with the sort of wide-ranging appeal that helped make Wicked such an enduring hit.

Wonderland: Alice's New Musical Adventure has just opened at the David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts (formerly the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, newly rechristened to honor an arts philanthropist's major gift).

Review | 'Rent' revival more relevant than ever

When Jonathan Larson's Rent took the New York theater world by storm almost 14 years ago, it quickly proved to be more than just another musical.

After its tragic birth Off-Broadway, when its 35-year-old creator died the night before the show's first performance, Rent went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama. It moved to Broadway, where its 5,123 performances made it the eighth longest-running musical in Broadway history. It opened doors for creators of rock-driven musicals and turned legions of young theatergoers into fans. It influenced things as trivial as fashion and as deep as living with compassion.

The touring version of Rent returned to South Florida on Tuesday, where it plays the Fillmore Miami Beach at the Jackie Gleason Theater through Sunday. Three of the show's original stars -- Adam Pascal as rocker Roger, Anthony Rapp as videographer/narrator Mark and Gwen Stewart as the soulful soloist on the show's best-known song, Seasons of Love -- are again part of the Rent cast.