newcomer Kris Kollins<\/a> isn\u2019t playing Prince. He\u2019s playing Prince playing the Kid.<\/p>\nIt feels like a Broadway show<\/h4>\nRelated Articles<\/h2>\n
Producers have said from the start that the plan is to bring \u201cPurple Rain\u201d to Broadway after its hometown debut. With a reported budget of $26.5 million, the show very much looks and feels like a full Broadway production, not a slimmed-down version like many touring shows.<\/p>\n
That means a large cast of actors and musicians performing on a lavish set with a number of costume changes. The aforementioned Bobby Z. along with fellow Prince associate Morris Hayes serve as musical advisers, which helped ensure Prince\u2019s music is presented in its true spirit.<\/p>\n
The cast and crew are stocked with seasoned Broadway professionals, including two-time Tony Award winner and Pulitzer Prize recipient Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, who wrote the book, and Tony Award winner Jason Michael Webb as the music supervisor who provides musical arrangements and orchestrations for the production.<\/p>\n
It gets dark<\/h4>\n
The film is remembered for Prince\u2019s otherworldly performances, captured live on stage at First Avenue (which is renamed \u201cthe First\u201d in the musical). But it took some dark and sexist turns, including a scene with a woman being thrown into a dumpster. The Kid also physically assaults Apollonia at one point.<\/p>\n
The musical both reflects that sexism and counters it. Jacobs-Jenkins fleshes out Apollonia\u2019s character and uses Prince\u2019s bandmates Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman to question the male-centered culture of the time.<\/p>\n
While there is some humor and plenty of memorable music, the show also examines mental health issues and portrays abuse in graphic ways. And, like the film, explicit language is plentiful.<\/p>\n
The casting will spur discussion<\/h4>\n
The trick with a jukebox musical like this that portrays an iconic figure like Prince is that it\u2019s an almost impossible task to find an actor who can live up to the Purple One\u2019s presence.<\/p>\n
Performing in Minneapolis, Kollins faces a level of scrutiny he won\u2019t on Broadway, or any other place \u201cPurple Rain\u201d may play. As the musical makes abundantly clear, Prince was a Minnesotan. And many in the audiences for the musical likely saw Prince live, multiple times even, and have close connections to those in his orbit. Many Minnesotans of a certain age have their own Prince stories, from longtime fans who made late-night pilgrimages to Paisley Park to employees of Prince haunts like the Dakota and Electric Fetus to neighbors who frequently spotted him riding his bike around Chanhassen.<\/p>\n
Kollins is surrounded by top-notch performers, including seasoned Broadway vet Rachel Webb as Apollonia and \u201cHamilton\u201d actor Jared Howelton, whose over-the-top portrayal of Morris Day is hilarious.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s full of Prince\u2019s music<\/h4>\nRelated Articles<\/h2>\n
\u201cPurple Rain\u201d opens with the Kid performing live at the First and, numerous times, the musical shifts more into concert territory. These scenes sparkle with excitement and, Thursday night, had some audience members cheering and occasionally weeping.<\/p>\n
The musical includes the familiar tracks from the excellent soundtrack, from \u201cLet\u2019s Go Crazy\u201d to \u201cI Would Die 4 U\u201d to \u201cWhen Doves Cry.\u201d It also incorporates other Prince-penned songs, including \u201cKiss,\u201d \u201cNothing Compares 2 U\u201d and \u201cU Got the Look.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whatever they may think about the production as a whole, it\u2019s hard to imagine theatergoers not leaving stunned by the performances of \u201cThe Beautiful Ones\u201d and \u201cDarling Nikki,\u201d two moments when \u201cPurple Rain\u201d truly captures the man, the myth and the legend.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than 2,000 Prince fans, followers and theatergoers waited in lines that stretched around the block Thursday night to catch the first-ever public performance of the \u201cPurple Rain\u201d musical at the State Theatre in downtown Minneapolis. First announced in January 2024, and delayed six months to \u201callow for more time for creative development,\u201d the musical\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2098850,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[351704,396546,345328],"class_list":["post-2098849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-purple-rain","tag-the-musical","tag-the-prince"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Five-observations-from-the-new-\u2018Purple-Rain-musical.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2098849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2098849"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2098849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2098851,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2098849\/revisions\/2098851"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2098850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2098849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2098849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2098849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}