Cynthia Onyedinmanasu Chinasaokwu Erivo (born 8 January 1987) is an English actress, singer, and songwriter.
She is known for her performance as Celie in the Broadway revival of The Color Purple, for which she won the 2016 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical, the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album, and the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Musical Performance in a Daytime Program, the latter two she shared with the rest of the cast.
Erivo ventured into films in 2018, with roles in the heist film Widows and the thriller Bad Times at the El Royale. In 2019, she portrayed abolitionist Harriet Tubman in the biopic Harriet, for which she earned nominations for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
‘The Color Purple’ Review: Purple Reigns
metroweekly.comThe royally enjoyable cast of Signature Theatre’s The Color Purple (★★★★★) forges a chain of love with no weak links in Timothy Douglas’ knockout staging of the musical based on Alice Walker’s novel and the acclaimed 1985 motion picture.The show marks a milestone for Signature, which, according to artistic director Matthew Gardiner, had developed plans a decade ago for a take on the musical, fresh off a two-year Broadway run of the original Tony-winning production.But those plans were scuttled due to John Doyle’s 2015 Broadway revival starring powerhouses Cynthia Erivo, Jennifer Hudson, and Danielle Brooks.Eventually that production made its way to D.C.
in the modified form of a Broadway touring company which, frankly, left a lot of the meat of this turbulent, decades-spanning drama still on the bone.
Well, Signature’s cast eats it all up, and leaves not a morsel.The story, familiar to most, concerns poor, Black, uneducated Celie escaping chains of abuse, sexism, racism, and illiteracy in Jim Crow Georgia to discover the power of loving herself.
Those who are familiar, especially with Steven Spielberg’s movie, will want to feel every wretched or wonderful beat of Celie’s story — the horror of sexual violence at the hands of “Mister,” the pain of separation from sister Nettie, the emboldening affinity for strong-willed Sofia, dawning of physical desire in the arms of Shug Avery, and final, overflowing catharsis of reunion.Douglas and company convey it all with a fresh feeling that captures those memorable Spielbergian moments, but expressed through the distinct performances of these players, led by Nova Y.
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