Director Richard Israel and a couldn’t-be-better cast and design team get everything right in Actors Co-op’s soul-reviving intimate staging of Jeanine Tesori and Brian Crawley’s New York Drama Critics’ Circle-winning 1997 off-Broadway musical Violet.

 The life of thirteen-year-old Violet (Lily Zager) was inexorably changed the day an axe blade flew accidentally off its handle and left a deep, ragged scar stretched across her cheek and the bridge of her nose, prompting the young girl’s father (John Allsopp) to set aside his every penny to pay for an operation to restore his daughter’s unscarred face, only to learn that he had waited years too long.

 Now, in 1964, two years after her father’s death, twenty-five year-old Violet (Claire Adams) has pinned all her hopes and dreams on a televangelist (Kevin Shewey) she is convinced can give her a movie star’s beauty, a tough order for a miracle, but one Violet trusts will be granted her if only she believes hard enough.

 Traveling by Greyhound Bus from Spruce Pine, North Carolina to Fort Smith, Arkansas, with stops in Kingsport, Nashville, Memphis, and Tulsa, Violet meets two soldiers, the smooth-talking Monty (Morgan West) and the more reserved Flick (Jahmaul Bakare), and though she is at first unsure about what to say and how to behave around a pair of Vietnam-bound military men, let alone one who is a “Negro,” she soon finds herself bonding with the soldiers over conversation and poker.

More importantly, with both men showing a hankering for the hitherto uncourted lass, Violet’s cross-country bus trip promises to be one well worth taking, miracle cure or not, and sprinkled with enough comic interludes to make it every bit as entertaining as it is moving.

 Violet’s joys are many, beginning with Tesori’s glorious bluegrass/gospel-based score, one of the best from the four-time Tony-nominated composer of Thoroughly Modern Millie, Caroline, Or Change, Shrek The Musical, and Fun Home.

Factor in Crawley’s equally fine lyrics and the lyricist’s powerful book (based on the story “The Ugliest Pilgrim” by Doris Betts) evoking an America in the midst of profound societal change, and you’ve got a musical that more than deserved its slightly trimmed-and-revised seventeenth-anniversary Broadway debut with Sutton Foster as its leading lady, a role Co-op member Adams now makes indelibly her own.

Elevating this Violet above the four other productions I’ve seen is its immersive design, one that turns the audience into flies on the walls of buses and bus stations, a nightclub, a cheap motel and more.

 Scenic designer Nicholas Acciani seats audience members on three sides of the Co-op’s blackbox Crossley Theatre, Greyhound Bus-style windows on opposite walls, moveable bus seats interspersed among front-row audience members to be wheeled out and reconfigured for travel sequences, then turned into waiting room benches, diner booths, and more. (A mini newsstand even pops up from under the floor when needed.)

 Add to this Martha Carter’s stunningly evocative lighting design, Wendell C. Carmichael’s period-perfect costumes, Klint Flowers’ character-establishing hair and makeup, and Samantha Ramirez’s era-appropriate properties and you’ve got a production design worthy of its own cheers.

Israel makes supremely inventive use of the playing area while eliciting definitive performances from his gifted cast.

 Her hair hanging lanky, her face scrunched up and devoid of makeup (though leaving it up to us to imagine Violet’s disfiguring scar), the lovely Adams convinces us of Violet’s longing for “Gene Tierney eyes” and “Ava Gardner’s cheekbones.” Her Violet is wounded, defiant, vulnerable, spunky, heartbreaking, and inspiring, with achingly beautiful vocals to match.

Adams’s crème-de-la-crème leading men are everything a Violet fan could wish for. West’s Monty is handsome and hunky but not at all heartless, Bakare’s Flick is a gentle giant with the pipes of an R&B superstar, and when Violet and her aspiring beaux join voices, expect pure heaven.

 Israel’s supporting cast deliver one performance gem after another, from Shewey’s shiny-suited, big-haired, charismatic-as-all-get-out preacher to Lauren Thompson’s sultry Music Hall Singer to Benai Boyd’s feisty old Lulu Buffington (with snaps to all three for the additional roles they play).

Co-op treasure Lori Berg is a double delight as a frumpy, grey-haired Old Lady and a Hooker who may be staggering drunk on her heels but hasn’t lost a curve over her decades in and out of beds.

Zager’s Young Violet and Allsop’s Father bring Violet’s childhood to devastating life in exquisitely performed and directed dreamlike flashbacks, with Patrick Cheek, Matthew Podeyn, and Emuna Rajkumar completing the all-around splendid cast in multiple cameos.

 Violet sounds terrific thanks to musical director Taylor Stephenson and a five-piece orchestra* who bring Tesori’s country-bluegrass-pop score to gorgeous life, with sound designer Cameron Combe ensuring instruments never overpower gloriously unamped vocals.

Choreographer Julie Hall scores points too for some groovy ‘60s moves.

Violet is produced by Thomas Chavira. Derek R. Copenhaver is stage manager and Jaime Mills is assistant stage manager. Selah Victor is production manager.

For three decades now, Actors Co-op has proved itself unequaled among L.A. theaters in downsizing Broadway musicals to 99-seat dimensions, from 110 In The Shade to The Baker’s Wife to Big River to Merrily We Roll Along to 1776, all of the above not coincidentally directed by Richard Israel. Violet is yet another Israel-Co-op triumph.

*Ellie Bunker, Thomas Lovasz, Manuel Mendoza, Dominic White, and Jorge Zuniga

Actors Co-Op Crossley Theatre, 1769 N. Gower St., Hollywood.
www.actorsco-op.org

–Steven Stanley
May 25, 2018
Photos: Matthew Gilmore

Tags: Actors Co-op, Brian Crawley, Jeanine Tesori, Los Angeles Theater Review