Violet (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

I'm not a huge fan of most musicals, although to be fair plenty of really excellent ones are out there.  The form at its best works not unlike Shakespeare--a heightened form and language making the story more vivid on many levels.

Violet does precisely that, which made attending the show not a slog through cloying sweetness but rather a very touching human story told in sharp relief.

Based on The Ugliest Pilgrim by Doris Betts, this show (directed by Richard Israel) takes place in September 1964 in the Deep South.  Violet (Claire Adams) is a twenty something girl from a tiny town taking the bus across several states to see a preacher, a man whom she has seen heal people on t.v.  She herself lives every day with a terrible scar across her face, one that makes anyone who doesn't know her do a very obvious take.   We don't see this scar, but are left to imagine it because at no time does the musical let us forget it is there.

Credit: Matthew Gilmore

From the beginning, we see Violet's memories, sometimes even interacting with her younger self (Lily Zager) or her late father (John Allsop).  In fact much of the show focuses on her past and coming to terms with it, including the way she's tried to deal with not so much the scar but how folks react to it--and her fierce, no-nonsense courage.  That this goes hand-in-hand with a belief and hope in faith healing makes for just one facet of how real she and the rest of the characters feel.  Most important will be two soldiers she meets on the bus--Flick (Jahmaul Bakare), an African American sargent, and his friend Monty (Morgan West).  They begin as traveling companions on the long road--how is that for a life metaphor?--but grow closer as they share events and experiences.

Credit: Matthew Gilmore

A word about the ensemble here.  I do not exaggerate when calling them excellent, not least because the vast majority play numerous characters, in as wide a range as a little old church lady as well as a pretty hard-boiled prostitute (Lori Berg), a gospel singer and hard-as-nails boarding house owner (Benai Boyd), a bus driver and born again preacher (Kevin Shewey) as well as a slew of others (Emuna Rajkumar, Matthew Podeyn ,Lauren Thompson).  Honestly, all these characters breathed, spoke, even (or especially) watched and listened as a series of distinct individuals.  That deserves a lot of applause right there.

Returning to the main story, Violet with Monty and Flick form something of a love triangle, which sounds cliche as all get out.  Cliches, however, depend upon laziness, upon assuming the audience will fill in the many, many gaps.  Not so here.  We end up deeply understanding all three characters more and more.

Credit: Matthew Gilmore

We even understand when one or more takes advantage of the other, often with zero malice but just loneliness.  Violet remains the focus, the one whose journey we follow every step of the way, whose heart becomes our own so that we find ourselves slipping into her own desperate hopes.  We feel them fall away, one by one.  More, we see new hopes replace them--this time, though, based on truth instead of mere wishes.

Not the stuff of nations or huge grandeur is Violet.  Yet still, epic--in the sense of the soul who, like us, tries to find purpose and happiness and acceptance.  Flick, who by the musical's end has fallen hard for this girl with a horribly scarred face, knows precisely why he has.  He even says it--she looks at him and sees him.  Not his skin color nor uniform nor rank.  Him.  Just as he looks at her and sees nothing but Violet herself.  Such a frightening thing to happen, and the stuff of our deepest desires.

Credit: Matthew Gilmore

This I submit is the beating heart of the greatest love stories.  Another sees us as we truly are, and in the reflection of their eyes we see ourselves for the first time. In this case to very nice songs, performed by a cast and crew who knew precisely how to tell this tale.

Violet plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 2:30pm through June 17, 2018 (with an extra Saturday matinee at 2:30pm May 26)  at the Actor's Co-op in the Crossley Theater on the east side of the campus of First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood, 1760 N. Gower Street, Hollywood CA 90028.