"Violet," a simple story of a deformed girl’s search for affection, acceptance and repair set to a simple score with a folk-rock feel is getting its area premiere at the Clark Street Playhouse under the banner of Arlington’s Keegan Theatre.
Set in the mid-1960s on a bus trip from North Carolina to Oklahoma, the musical flashes back to explain just how the teenaged Violet came to have a disfiguring scar which is described as splitting her face in two.
Deanna Harris plays the role without any makeup representing the scar. Instead, the reactions of people when they first view her face and her own gestures of pulling her hair down at the side of her face give the audience the idea.
Besides, it isn’t the physical nature of the scar that is at the heart of the story. The story is really about the search for cures for all the injuries of youth and about the human tendency to turn to religion, friendship, companionship and/or love to heal any hurt.
Violet seeks those cures in the temple of Hope & Glory in Oklahoma, in the companionship of her fellow travelers on the bus and even in the bed of one during a stopover in Memphis.
Two of the travelers are soldiers, one white and one black. Since the time is the height of the civil rights turmoil of the 1960s, there are issues of racial hostility on top of the sexual and religious tensions.
Harris has a good strong voice and a graceful stage presence. As Arlingtonians who caught her performances in "Grand Hotel" and "Gypsy" this past year at Signature Theatre know, she has a quality that makes vulnerability visible. In "Gypsy" she had a touching solo sung to a stuffed doll, while her need for success as the typewriter girl in "Grand Hotel" was touching. Here she again excels at exposing a character’s deepest fears, needs and dreams.
The two soldier boys are also of robust voice with distinct personalities. Steven Claiborne has the strongest of the voices but Trenton Wagler proves he’s no slouch either with the song ‘You’re Different."
The strongest voice in the cast, however, is that of Jimmy Payne who plays Violet’s father. The strength of his voice comes as no surprise to those who saw him do John Adams in "1776" at the Little Theatre of Alexandria a few years ago.
Amy McWilliams, frequently on the stage herself as one of the area’s most talented actresses, directs this production. Her approach is very visual, using a multi-tiered structure that puts the past overhead peering down on the problems of the present.
It produces memorable stage pictures but has the unfortunate effect of placing Julie Schroll, who plays the young "Violet" in the flash backs, farthest away from the audience. Schroll has a pure, pleasant voice but it doesn’t carry well over such a distance.
Every member of the cast has to battle the small band placed behind the set because the acoustics of the high-ceilinged Clark Street Playhouse create an imbalance between the vocals and the accompaniment.
Tony Angelini compensates in his sound design by amplifying some of the gospel singing but is unable to strike the proper balance for the more acoustic sounds of the folk/rock segments of the score.