Dreamgirls’ star Jennifer Hudson will make her Broadway debut as Shug Avery in a revival of The Color Purple this fall. Produced by Scott Sanders, Roy Furman, and Oprah Winfrey, the Grammy, Oscar and Golden Globe winner will play a sultry blues singer in the production directed and designed by John Doyle, who received a director’s Tony in 2006 for his own Broadway debut, “Sweeney Todd.” Doyle opened his production of The Color Purple in 2013 in London at the Menier Chocolate Factory. Music and lyrics are by Grammy winners Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray. The story is set in rural Georgia as it follows a different character, Celie, through a life of adversity and, ultimately, love, reports the Associated Press.
