Two-time Tony Award winner Sutton Foster (Anything Goes, Thoroughly Modern Millie) returns to Roundabout in the highly anticipated Broadway debut of Violet, following the acclaimed concert performance at City Center Encores! Off-Center. Winner of the Drama Critics' Circle Award and Lucille Lortel Award for Best Musical when it premiered Off-Broadway, Violet features music by Tony nominee Jeanine Tesori (Caroline, or Change, Fun Home) and book and lyrics by Brian Crawley (A Little Princess). Leigh Silverman (Chinglish, Well) directs.
Since every other song is geared to bring down the house, it's a surprise the American Airlines Theatre still stands. Several spare but lovely melodies continue to run through Tesori's music; one thing that the original Violet had going for it was simplicity, and the composer didn't overreach with a big Rosa's Turn the way she did with the eleven o'clock numbers in her subsequent shows Caroline, or Change and Fun Home. Some of that unadorned lyrical beauty remains in Violet's ballads, nicely sung by Sutton Foster. She succeeds in not competing with the showbiz brashness surrounding her, although the actress's signature can-do spunk doesn't always jibe with Violet's self-image. Perhaps that little inconsistency doesn't matter. The generic hillbilly twang that everyone sports is just make believe. Give these country folks a song, and they can't help but turn into Broadway babies.
[Foster] sings, 'I am on my way.' Buckle your seatbelts, folks. So are you. And what a wonderful trip it is...Songs by composer Jeanine Tesori and lyricist Brian Crawley add dimensions and textures, too. Summoning country-fried rhythms, gospel glory, bittersweet ballads and tender lullabies, the score is a rich and beautiful thing. Well-integrated too. Numbers make perfect sense and fuel characters and the plot like high-test gasoline...This journey unfolds a half-century ago, but you don't have to look far to see that the idea that life can change dramatically and devastatingly in a flash. What you do next becomes the question - and it makes this Violet evergreen.
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