NEW YORK - Hillary Clinton, who has kept a relatively low public profile since losing the US presidential election two months ago, showed up at the final performance of a revival of The Color Purple on Broadway and received a sustained standing ovation from the sold-out crowd.

The moment was captured by many in the audience and circulated widely on social media.

It was a response far warmer than the scattered booing and clapping that greeted the arrival of Vice-President-elect Mike Pence when he attended Hamilton in the city on Nov 18.

Clinton was accompanied by her husband, Bill Clinton, and their daughter, Chelsea, at the performance on Sunday (Jan 8).

Because the Sunday matinee was the last performance for this acclaimed production, which won last year's Tony for best musical revival, there were other boldfaced names there as well, including Phylicia Rashad (the 2004 Tony winner for best actress in a play, Raisin In The Sun) and Debra Messing, who made her Broadway debut in 2014 in Outside Mullingar.

Public sightings of Clinton in the weeks since the election have still been sufficiently rare that they create a stir on social media.

Strangers seek photographs with her at stores and in the woods near her home in Chappaqua, New York.

But Clinton has indicated that she and her husband plan to attend the inauguration of Donald Trump as president on Jan 20.

The Color Purple tells the searing story of a young black woman abused by her stepfather and her husband in rural Georgia in the early 20th century.

The musical is an adaptation of a best-selling 1982 novel, by Alice Walker, which was awarded the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Steven Spielberg adapted the novel into a film in 1985, and Oprah Winfrey, who was featured in the film, went on to become an important champion, and co-producer, of the musical.