It tells the story of a young disfigured woman who embarks on a journey by bus from her farm in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, all the way to Tulsa, Oklahoma in order to be healed.
Other cast members included Michael Medeiros, Stephen Lee Anderson, Amanda Posner and Robert Westenberg.
Other cast members included Van Hughes, Austin Lesch, Anastacia McCleskey, Keala Settle, Christopher Sieber, Emerson Steele, Chris Sullivan, Rema Webb, and Paul Whitty.
[7] The UK premiere opened January 14th, 2019 at the Off-West End Charing Cross Theatre, with Kaisa Hammarlund as Violet.
[8] With a ticket, a suitcase, and a heart full of expectation, Violet Karl waits for a Greyhound bus in Spruce Pine, North Carolina.
A local's nosy question breaks Violet's reverie, prompting her to look forward to the healing she expects to receive from a televangelist in Tulsa that will help her transcend her provincial little town ("Surprised").
Violet asks to join their game, and as they deal her in, she privately recalls how her father taught her to play ("Luck of the Draw").
He takes a book she carries and plays keep-away with it, which triggers Violet's memory of the day she found the catechism in her father's bedside table.
With the help of movie magazines she shows the soldiers the physical features she'd like best ("All to Pieces"), but they offend her when their attention wanders.
She sits apart from them as the journey continues, recalling once again her younger self singing the folk song, which turns out to have been the moment just before the accident ("Water in the Well [Reprise]").
The threesome venture out to a Beale Street music hall, where the sight of Flick dancing with Violet attracts some unfriendly attention ("Lonely Stranger").
The music hall singer, the landlady and the hooker cap the evening with a trio about unfulfilled desire ("Anyone Would Do [Reprise]").
He pawns her off on Virgil, a young assistant, and in her frustration she recovers the memory of being carried in her father's arms after the accident ("Down the Mountain").
Aware that something about herself has changed, Violet assumes it is her scar; she reboards the bus, convinced she has had a miracle ("Surprised [Reprise]").
[14] In his review in The New York Times, Ben Brantley wrote that the musical "raised the topicality quotient...and reconfigured its source's love story to put direct emphasis on parallels between Violet and Flick, who as a black man in the southern United States knows what it's like to be judged by your skin.... 'Violet' integrates a number of styles, from gospel and bluegrass to Memphis blues.... Ms. Tesori has a fine hand for harmonies and counterpoint.... What the show fails to do is to provide any compelling sense of character.
With its tangy flavors of country, gospel, blues and honky-tonk rock, it is also her warmest, most accessible score .