damn!

the more I think about it,they probably should have just done a Prince jukebox musical....containing songs and moments from his entire career....instead of strictly focusing on Purple Rain.Based on these early comments,it looks like they're having a hard time presenting/updating the Purple Rain movie as a stage musical.

I can't wait for this train wreck to be over, so that the Estate can eventually finally think about doing something sensible, like releasing previously unreleased music.

Saw it last night in the heart of Minneapolis. Here's my review:

_

As a longtime Prince fan, I walked into the theater desperately wanting to love this show. Purple Rain is sacred ground, and I braced myself for the worst – a sanitized, show-tunes version that would neuter Prince's revolutionary sound. Surprisingly, that's not what went wrong here. The music remained faithful to Prince's original arrangements, and the cast delivered strong performances across the board. But despite these strengths, the musical makes fundamental storytelling choices that strip away the soul of the source material, leaving us with a bloated, preachy shadow of what made the film so powerful.

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What Works

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The production gets the most important thing right: the music. Against all odds, the arrangements stay true to Prince's vision. The inclusion of post-Purple Rain songs like "U Got the Look," "Kiss," "When 2 R in Love," and "Partyman" could have felt jarring, but they fit thematically and energize the show.

The cast rises to the considerable challenge before them. Morris Day steals every scene he's in (though oddly, Jerome is dressed just as flashily as Morris, when he should be in a muted suit to contrast with Morris's peacocking). Apollonia is a revelation – the creative team wisely retooled her role beyond the one-dimensional beauty of the film, giving her agency and depth. And Kris Kollins, as The Kid, does admirable work with what he's given. No one can recapture Prince's magnetic presence, but Kollins commits fully to the role.

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Where It All Falls Apart

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Pacing and Tone Problems

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Despite its energy, the show grinds to a shocking halt multiple times for extended stretches of stilted, after-school-special dialogue about misogyny, relationships, family trauma, and healing. The worst offender: one of the Apollonia 6 members (Brenda, I believe) delivers an endless monologue about the patriarchy that completely kills the momentum. Look, the message is welcome – but it's delivered in the most trite, heavy-handed, banal, middle-school-essay way imaginable. It sucks all the energy out of the room and feels like it was written by someone who just discovered feminist theory last semester. These moments feel ripped from a millennial therapy session and delivered with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. The tone clash is jarring – one moment you're swept up in Prince's genius, the next you're suffering through preachy exposition that borders on condescending. The show is also too long, sagging under the weight of these unnecessary additions.

(Minor gripe: at one point The Kid literally removes his heeled boots Mr. Rogers-style and puts on white Nikes to do dance moves. Bizarre.)

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The Gutted Heart: The Father-Son Story

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Here's the fatal flaw. The film's emotional core is the toxic, tragic relationship between The Kid and his father. In the movie, The Kid's father is a broken, burned-out musician who physically abuses The Kid's mother and emotionally abuses his son. He tells The Kid his music isn't good enough, actively works against him, and embodies everything The Kid fears becoming – the same cocky rebellion, the same violent outbursts, the same self-destructive spiral. The father's attempted suicide becomes the catalyst for The Kid's transformation; in his father's music, he finds both understanding and redemption. The entire arc of the film hinges on this painful inheritance of trauma and the transcendent power of music to break the cycle.

The musical throws all of this away.

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The mother is gone (relegated to flashbacks), the abusive relationship is over, and The Kid now lives with a softened, supportive father figure who serves as a positive mentor. In one insufferable scene, the father literally lectures The Kid about respecting women and how marriage should be a friendship, then they hug. This is the antithesis of the film, where the father tells The Kid "Never get married" before attempting to take his own life.

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Without this foundation, the entire structure collapses. The Kid's drama is reduced to being sad about his breakup with Apollonia. He comes off as whiny rather than damaged. Songs like "When Doves Cry," "Computer Blue," and "Father's Song" lose their devastating weight and meaning. The stakes vanish.

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The Kid Talks Too Much

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This connects to a larger characterization problem: The Kid never shuts up. Film and theater are different mediums, yes, but the choice to make The Kid verbose fundamentally misunderstands the character. In the movie, Prince's Kid is intensely inward. His emotions explode onstage through his music, while offstage his quiet, simmering presence and expressive eyes reveal his inner turmoil – until he erupts in violence, just like his father. He shows us who he is; he doesn't tell us.

In the musical, The Kid explains his feelings constantly. Before singing "Purple Rain," he spends at least five minutes delivering a monologue about the lesson he's learned and music's power to heal. This hand-holding is insulting and dramatically inert. It transforms a complex, magnetic character into a flimsy, ineffective one who can't carry the show.

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Misguided Character Choices

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The Revolution gets expanded roles, which could be interesting, but the execution is baffling. In one subplot, Wendy and Lisa leave The Revolution to join Morris Day and help Apollonia form a "respectful" girl group celebrated for musicianship rather than sex appeal. The intentions are clear, but the logic is nonexistent. Morris remains the same sexist lothario from the film – there's absolutely no reason Wendy and Lisa would abandon The Kid to work with him.

More egregiously, this subplot comes with another Brady Bunch-level scene where Bobby Z and Lisa explain to The Kid that the band is like family and everyone has trauma. In the film, The Revolution were scrappy outsiders who fought but ultimately stuck together through loyalty and friendship. The Kid's arc culminated in him finally respecting their artistry and playing their music. That journey had weight. This sanitized version feels focus-grouped within an inch of its life.

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The Bottom Line

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The creative team seems terrified that modern audiences won't understand the film's themes without explicit instruction. But 1980s audiences absolutely knew The Kid and Morris were wrong in their treatment of women and friends – that was the entire point. The film trusted viewers to understand subtext, to read emotion in performance, to feel the music's power without a guided tour.

There's something here worth saving. The talent is there, the music is there, the potential is there. But this production needs a radical overhaul that returns to the source material's dark, complicated heart. Stop explaining. Stop sanitizing. Trust the music. Trust the audience. Trust Prince's vision.

Until then, this Purple Rain. This show is not a dove, it's pidgeon that won't fly in Minneapolis. They need to overhaul the show if it's got a prayer of making a splash on Broadway.

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C-

[Edited 10/19/25 15:54pm]

Skywalker that was a really well written review. Thanks.

Oof, that sounds rough. Thanks, Skywalker.

SoulAlive said:

the more I think about it,they probably should have just done a Prince jukebox musical....containing songs and moments from his entire career....instead of strictly focusing on Purple Rain.Based on these early comments,it looks like they're having a hard time presenting/updating the Purple Rain movie as a stage musical.

.

They don't have the rights to Prince's life story, only to Purple Rain.

bizzie said:

SoulAlive said:

the more I think about it,they probably should have just done a Prince jukebox musical....containing songs and moments from his entire career....instead of strictly focusing on Purple Rain.Based on these early comments,it looks like they're having a hard time presenting/updating the Purple Rain movie as a stage musical.

.

They don't have the rights to Prince's life story, only to Purple Rain.

Doing a Prince jukebox musical doesn't mean it has to be based on his life story.

Can be set in MPLS or "Uptown" with a Prince inspired character serving as a narrator or spirit guide to the main characters story. Could be a mix between Rent & Rock of Ages. A missed opportunity to do something special

boomshaka said:

bizzie said:

.

They don't have the rights to Prince's life story, only to Purple Rain.

Doing a Prince jukebox musical doesn't mean it has to be based on his life story.

Can be set in MPLS or "Uptown" with a Prince inspired character serving as a narrator or spirit guide to the main characters story. Could be a mix between Rent & Rock of Ages. A missed opportunity to do something special

.

Please read the text I quoted. That's what I replied to.

.

[Edited 10/20/25 14:26pm]

So this is the basket that the estate put all of their eggs into while neglecting vault releases, and now the musical is gonna be a complete trainwreck instead of the smash hit they hoped for? What a fucking trip

I mean, we could all see this coming from miles away, but it's still hilarious to see it confirmed by early reviews.

SoulAlive said:

the more I think about it,they probably should have just done a Prince jukebox musical....containing songs and moments from his entire career....instead of strictly focusing on Purple Rain.Based on these early comments,it looks like they're having a hard time presenting/updating the Purple Rain movie as a stage musical.

They couldn't even successfully adapt Purple Rain and that's an iconic movie with an easy story practically handed to them on a silver platter. If they fucked up an existing template that badly, there's no chance they could write an entire original story worth watching.

bizzie said:

skywalker said:

Saw it last night in the heart of Minneapolis. Here's my review:

Great review, thank you for posting.

.

Some of the choices seem completely baffling, most of all the changes to the parents, this is critical to the story and its themes, bizarre.

peedub said:

bizzie said:

.

They don't have the rights to Prince's life story, only to Purple Rain.

Not to pick nits, but if Skywalker's review is accurate, they do seem to have rights to more than just purple rain.

.

Rights to the *story* and the characters. Of course they then can go deeper, but nothing in that review showed them adapting Prince's life.

Can someone confirm that during Let's Go Crazy ... a purple banana runs across the stage..

That can't be accurate, right?

Curious about this "Morris/dumpster" scene. Another person complained about it too.

DotsofU said:

Can someone confirm that during Let's Go Crazy ... a purple banana runs across the stage..

That can't be accurate, right?

BonnieC said:

DotsofU said:

Can someone confirm that during Let's Go Crazy ... a purple banana runs across the stage..

That can't be accurate, right?

Yes, a purple bananna. Which really sums up this play....not much subtley or wit.

skywalker said:

skywalker said:

I don't doubt for a second the abilities of the freshmen/girls involved in this kind of production, but never truer have the words of Alan Leeds made sense. I'm parapharasing:

Purple Rain was an alignment of the stars, a cosmic event, something that shouldn't have happened.

No one could have predicted that the Reagan Jugend would suddenly do a 180 turn and go for the bone, the mld-class born on the skirts of town, the improbable fusion of early Jackson and early Springsteen, full electronica, fucked by society yet cocky enough to raise in spite of it, in a blurry of nails, laces, smoke, and mascara for good measure (let's shock our parents) and for the Glam (Bowie and Bolan lurk in the purple smoke).

It's downtown coming to Uptown, it's a rare event, and the era in which such event can occur matters a lot. But the damage Trump is causing these days is not different from what Reagan brought to his own mid-class mid-term(s).


Purple Rain is enhanced by its fantastic sound design, beyond the incredible songs. The soundtrack brings a bag of tricks that is in retrospect very strange. It sounds like Michel Colombier (it litterally means "dovecot" in french, cf. Prince's doves, you can't invent this shit) listened carefully to every Prince record until 1999, and chose the overall sound and stripped down his arrangements, to match the bare-bone avant-garde approach Prince had towards pop music at the time.

Yes, you could do a musical, but you'll have to give instrumentals like God their full 8 minutes, with a ballet or some "danced sex" scene, something abstract, and let the audience sip the entirety of "God Instrumental", or even the Vocal version, to bring some anguish; Purple Rain is not an easy movie, everything is falling apart, the race issue is never brought, but the script could very well be about a young jazz trumpetist who wants to make it some hundred years ago, he's playing a club but he has a contender, drugs and poverty can even replace the father/mother conflict, but keeping the family melting in real time, it can also take place in the 1920's New York bronx.

The music is so good that it supports every instrumentation, it can be all instrumental.
There's proof of it. If enthusiasts, not seasoned Broadway arrangers, can already reach depth...

The first scene that makes Purple Rain what it is, is the one when the only frame you have of The Kid and his parents in the same shot is him separating them. After that, the three of them are shot alone in the frame. And then I don't think you ever see the three of them in the same frame again until the brief "I Would Die 4 U" shot, when The Kid makes a visit at the hospital.

Another crucial scene is the smashing of the basement, it has to be in there, broken glass and jelly flying... It's a good thing you can sing, but if you can't act going full berserk with a baseball bat and then in an instant cry your soul out, moaning while you throw in the air a full drawer of your father's music sheets, forget about it ("I never write them down, I don't have to, that's the difference bewteen you and me" is in the end, bullshit, the lesson being "grown-ups can't be trusted"; a message that rings true to young ears from all epochs).


A friend of mine told me she saw, at the beginning of the nineties, a Shakespeare's Hamlet orchestrated with only Prince songs. And that the scene with Purple Rain blasting in the theater had all the audience floored.

So maybe, to make it original and true to itself, this story of a young dude having to fight against the world, his loved ones, and his inner demons while trying to carve himself a place in the sun can be transposed at will, heck, The Kid could be a girl, the place in the sun doesn't have to be a career or stardom in music, it wouldn't matter what form it takes.

Home Violence, surviving under neoliberalism and its rat race, sexism : Darling Nikki isn't so much a dissing of the woman's desire but rather a sublime abdication, a shouted out admission of the power of the woman over the man. And the masculine violence in the movie can be addressed, another societal matter that's very much alive.

With such serious and contemporary subjects, sure the musical would not end to be a feelgood for two hours, but isn't the album track list already all about tension and release, from side A to side B?

Make a play for adults, and adults will go see it en masse. Prince's music was and is still loved.
But choose to make yet another paint-by-numbers musical, with stupid long notes held forever (hey, check my tonsils out), and a careful avoidance of anything that could stir controversy, you'll get a flop.

Besides, I'm sure kids would love a play that speaks to them. You could take the album songs and make a full "Baby Driver" soundtrack out of it. You can choose any hero with a passion to fulfill, and "Let's Go Crazy" propels any story beginning, be it a play, a musical or a movie.
It's more about the mindset Prince's music puts you in, and LGC brings adolescent rage.


But after such an intro, you better give something that's par to what you've just announced: the main characters in the play are afflicted from various familial traumas and resulting ego injuries, the bulk of it being carried by our hero.


Who doesn't relate to that?
It's effing universal, enough at the time to excite all of America for a whole year.

[Edited 10/22/25 10:34am]

ShellyMcG said:

skywalker said:

Yes, a purple bananna. Which really sums up this play....not much subtley or wit.

I thought Dots was joking. They really have a big purple banana?

.

And a Grim Reaper, apparently.

[Edited 10/23/25 7:35am]

bizzie said:

bizzie said:

ShellyMcG said:

skywalker said: I thought Dots was joking. They really have a big purple banana?

.

And a Grim Reaper, apparently.

[Edited 10/23/25 7:35am]

Yes. And not even a cool/modern/scary one like in the movie scrooged.

BonnieC said:

pdiddy2011 said:

I believe the mistake is your definition of the word legacy... I clearly stated that MJ being a great entertainer is the legacy showcased by MJ the Musical. Which is further confirmed by the legion of people putting up their hard earned money to continue to see the show - again - that has been getting really good reviews.

But we clearly can't debate, because again, you measure artistic value in terms of money, and I don't. You could defend the show by expressing what is great about it, yet your arguments are the cash it brings and the spotlight it grabs.

"Hard earned", that's a fantaisy of yours: anyone who truly works hard for their money doesn't have any left for this kind of superfluous. We're all spoiled western dudes. So I don't know why you're playing this kind of Charles Dickens or Nebraska's Springsteen card ("these poor people savings!") to give some cred or sanctity to the MJ show.

And again, you think reviews and awards are not bought, you think they're genuine journalism.
You clearly don't know squat about the industry. Or maybe you fantasize about one that existed eons ago.

We can't have a debate without a single base of discussion, let's leave it at that.
Enjoy your broadway shows by all means.

This is a forum, and it's meant for expression.
You don't like mine? Differents strokes.
Take it easy, there's nothing in it ad hominem,
despite the 8 Mile provocations.

[Edited 10/15/25 20:33pm]

It's presumptuous and INCORRECT to assume that I measure artistic value in terms of money.

My point was that people ARE spending their hard-earned money and my impression from people that have seen [and reviewed] the show is that the show reinforced that MJ was an incredible entertainer (making my point that a musical can reflect positively towards a person's legacy). ANYONE that paid to see the musical had a myriad of options to use that hard-earned money elsewhere. Just because you don't like musicals doesn't change the fact that they can be as much or more expensive than A-list concerts. People aren't throwing away money (that apparently grows on trees) just because it's for a musical.

All of your other ballyhoo about what I think journalism is and whether or not reviews and awards are bought is superfluous and nonsensical.

To refresh your memory, this kerfuffle started because I called you out after you felt it appropriate to trash and demean the actors and show BEFORE seeing the show (or even giving it a chance to get it's first review). Forum or not, judging the actors/performance having not seen them (or having any factual experience with the performance) is low. What you deem as good entertainment isn't the end-all-be-all. Just because you don't like musicals doesn't mean they are performed by hacks and yoddlers.

And please don't take my pushback as trying to convince you to give musicals a chance. I love that you are leaving seats open for people who appreciate the medium.

skywalker said: