Violet
Music by Jeanine Tesori, book and lyrics by Brian Crawley
Presented by the University Theater, U. of Georgia
Warning: The musical had a short run and closed before I wrote these notes in October, Year 2.
It is good style to begin with the good things about the show. Rachel Richards, who played the title role, has a terrific voice and stage presence. David Spearman, in the role of Sgt. Flick, has got some moves and also connects with his audience. The scenic design, by B. Don Massey, almost made the Fine Arts Theater seem not to suck. Blake Bowen, in the role of Cpl. Monty, made the best (I do not mean this ironically) of a badly written part.
The musical derives from a short story, "The Ugliest Pilgrim," by Doris Betts. Hardly what you or I would choose to write a musical about, but we're in the Postmodern Era now and Rent puts bottoms in the seats. So Tesori and Crawley (she gets credit for the acclaimed Thoroughly Modern Millie) brought Violet to the stage. Marked by an axe cut in childhood, as an adult (in 1964) Violet travels by bus from the North Carolina mountains to Tulsa and partway back, getting faith-healed and falling in, more or less, love.
Betts is a few years older than I am—living in Athens, I find it hard to remember that there are people a few years older than I am—and was pretty much an adult in 1964, so she ought to know how it was. I rode the bus with Violet a few times, change at Charlotte for Asheville-Knoxville-Nashville-and-points-west, and sure enough, the zealots, refined and other old ladies, ballyhoo men, soldiers and dull-eyed survivors were all on there. What I can't recall to save my life is a young white woman traveling with an African-American noncom, but let that pass. The bus rides in the show provided a useful image of what you leave behind in going On The Road and what trails along with you. They yielded the most satisfactory moments, I think.
And Violet's scar provided an image of yadda yadda. It makes a good short story, fine. As a musical, though, it needs not just story but book, lyrics and music. Right.
The book had nothing going. A lot of scenes felt stretched. There was nothing compelling in the dialog, and the construction melded the worst of straight-down-the-middle linear storytelling and time-shuffling parallelism. It's a pretty good rule that a short story can carry one little theme; in this instance, perhaps, what does ugly mean? To make a whole evening's Postmodern entertainment of it, Crawley needed more themes, so we also got Vietnam, race relations and phony television preachers. No, wait, there was also emotional deprivation and suppressed memory, and On The Road. Too much theme? Don't let it be forgot that a few seasons ago a musical called The Civil War had a run; somebody thinks there is no such thing as too much theme.
I can't judge the lyrics, because I could seldom understand them. This is chiefly my own deficiency but may also owe something to the Fine Arts Theater, which is all right on vowels but sucks up hompomamp.
The music was, how can I say this strongly enough, stupefying. It left nothing to remember, except for the timidly offered observation that when you set two people singing different melodies, it is a kindness to the audience if the melodies have some relation to each other.
No doubt the University Theater has a mission to put up musicals now and again. And maybe Violet points the way to the future as far as performers-in-training are concerned. Pity. Well, we can all hope to live till the next revival of The Pajama Game.
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Violet