VIOLET, a multi award-winning musical with Music by Jeanine Tesori (Tony Award winner for Best Original Score with Lisa Kron for Fun Home, and Tony-nominated for Caroline, or Change and Shrek the Musical), and Book & Lyrics by Brian Crawley (The Little Princess), is to get its UK premiere in a 12-week season to Saturday 6 Apri in an international co-production that will see it transfer to Tokyo
Kaisa Hammarlund (Violet) has just played Alison Bechdel in the acclaimed UK premiere of Fun Home at the Young Vic. Her other major roles include Charity Hope Valentine in Sweet Charity, Royal Exchange Theatre, Petra, A Little Night Music, Menier Chocolate Factory & Garrick
Theatre, and Elle Woods, Legally Blonde, Nojesteatern, Malmo Sweden.
Jay Marsh (Flick) was Schultz/1st cover John in Miss Saigon, Gregory Piven, Sunny Afternoon, Sammy Davis Jr, Christmas With The Rat Pack, 1st cover Porgy in Porgy & Bess, Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre).
Matthew Harvey (Monty) was Francis in Loserville at the Union Theatre.
The cast also features Simbi Akande, Angelica Allen, Kenneth Avery-Clark, Keiron Crook, James Gant, Danny Michaels, Janet Mooney with Amy Mepham, Rebecca Nardin and Maddie Sellman as young Violet.
1964. Somewhere between North Carolina and Oklahoma, we find Violet, a young woman who was facially disfigured as a child. She hopes her life savings will bring her a miracle halfway across the country. Reflecting on her childhood, and shaped by the reactions of the people she encounters, Violet embarks on a life-changing personal journey.
VIOLET, based on the short story The Ugliest Pilgrim by Doris Betts, premiered Off-Broadway and won the Drama Critics’ Circle Award and Lucille Lortel Award as Best Musical, before transferring to Broadway where it was nominated for four Tony awards.
Creative team: Directed by Shuntaro Fujita, Choreography by Cressida Carré, Set Design by Morgan Large, Costume by Jonathan Lipman, Lighting by Howard Hudson, Sound by Andrew Johnson, Music Director Dan Jackson, Associate Music Director Chris Ma. Associate Director Abigail Pickard-Price Production Supervisior Thom Southerland.
Producers: Steven M. Levy and Vaughan Williams for Charing Cross Theatre Productions Limited
in a co-production with Umeda Arts Theater Co, Ltd., Osaka, Japan
Performed by arrangement with Music Theatre International (Europe) Limited.
JEANINE TESORI
Music
Jeanine Tesori won the Tony Award for Best Original Score with Lisa Kron for the musical Fun Home. She has also written Tony-nominated scores for Twelfth Night at Lincoln Center; Thoroughly Modern Millie (lyrics, Dick Scanlan); Caroline, or Change (lyrics, Tony Kushner); and Shrek The Musical (lyrics, David Lindsay-Abaire). The production of Caroline, or Change at the National Theatre in London received the
Olivier Award for Best New Musical. Her 1997 Off-Broadway musical Violet (lyrics, Brian Crawley) opened on Broadway in 2014 and
garnered four Tony nominations, including Best Musical Revival. Opera: A Blizzard on Marblehead Neck (libretto, Tony Kushner;
Glimmerglass) and The Lion, The Unicorn, and Me (libretto, J. D. McClatchy, Kennedy Center). Music for plays: Mother Courage
(dir. George C. Wolfe, with Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline), John Guare’s A Free Man of Color (Lincoln Center Theater, dir. George C. Wolfe), and Romeo and Juliet (Delacorte Gala). Film scores: Nights in Rodanthe, Every Day, and You’re Not You. Ms. Tesori is a member of the Dramatists Guild and was cited by the ASCAP as the first female composer to have two new musicals running concurrently on Broadway.
BRIAN CRAWLEY
Lyrics & Book
Brian Crawley is a playwright and screenwriter. He wrote the book and lyrics for A Little Princess (composer Andrew Lippa) which debuted at Theatreworks of Palo Alto in the summer of 2004. He also wrote the book and lyrics for Violet (composer Jeanine Tesori) which was mounted Off-Broadway by Playwrights Horizons in 1997, then remounted in a concert version in 2003 to help inaugurate their new theater. Other musicals he has written include Evangeline with Ted Dykstra, and Down There with composer Lewis Flinn. He appears in the
documentary One Night Stand in which he writes a short musical in 24 hours with composer Gabriel Kahane. For the libretto of Violet, Brian won the Kleban Award. Prior to the Playwrights Horizons production, and on its behalf, Violet was given the Richard Rodgers Musical Production Award and an AT&T OnStage Award. Afterwards, besides a Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Musical, Violet received the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Musical over all the year’s Broadway offerings (as did Paula Vogel’s play How I Learned to Drive; the first time two off-Broadway pieces took these top awards in the Drama Critic Circle’s history). Brian’s plays have been developed or staged at Lincoln Center, New York Theater Workshop, the National Alliance of Musical Theatre, and the Eugene O’Neill summer theater conference.
Shuntaro Fujita
Director
Shuntaro is a director of MY Promotion, Tokyo. He received Best Theatre Award of the 42nd Kikuta Kazuo Theatre Award in April 2017, and
Best Director Award of the 24th Yomiuri Theatre Awards, the most prestigious theatre award in Japan, in 2017.
Theatre includes: Peter Pan (Tokyo International Forum); Danny and Deep Blue Sea (Kinokuniya Hall Tokyo); Take Me Out (DDD Aoyama Cross Theatre); Jersey Boys (Theatre Creation - winner, Best Director Award and Best Production Award of the 24th Yomiuri Theatre Awards in 2017); Tegami the musical, New National Theatre); The Little Mermaid the musical in a version by Shuji Terayama (Theatre West, Tokyo); The Beautiful Game (otherwise known as The Boys in the Photograph, New National Theatre - winner, Sugimura Haruko Award and
Best Director Award of the 22nd Yomiuri Theatre Awards in 2015); The Factory 2: Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen (Sainokuni Saitama Arts Theater).
Steven M. Levy and Vaughan Williams
for Charing Cross Theatre Productions Limited
in a co-production with
Umeda Arts Theater Co, Ltd., Osaka, Japan
present
Music by Jeanine Tesori
Book and Lyrics by Brian Crawley
based on The Ugliest Pilgrim
by Doris Betts
Charing Cross Theatre
The Arches
Villiers Street
London
WC2N 6NL
Search tickets below
Monday 14 January - Saturday 6 April, 2019
Press Night:
Monday 21 January
at 7.30pm
Performances
Monday – Saturday at 7.30pm
Matinees Wednesday at 2.30pm
and Saturday at 3.00pm
