Heartfelt ‘Violet’ Tackles Its Story With Musical Aplomb

For all its heartfelt impulses and the efforts of a talented composer, “Violet” isn’t a very satisfying musical. But the Laguna Playhouse California premiere offers some satisfying performers. The level of onstage talent bodes well for the Playhouse, especially if it remains committed to offbeat musical theater projects. And on-beat ones.

Chiefly, there’s Sarah Uriarte Berry, on leave from the current “Sunset Boulevard” tour, playing the North Carolina mountain woman determined to do something about a disfiguring facial scar.

“It’s a pilgrimage,” says Violet Karl (Berry) to her fellow bus travelers, in Doris Betts’ story, “The Ugliest Pilgrim,” the source of the musical. “I’m going to see this preacher in Tulsa, the one that heals, and I’m coming home pretty.”

Set largely on board a Greyhound coach, “Violet” makes rest stops along the way: Scenes unfold in waiting rooms and boarding houses in Nashville; Memphis; Fort Smith, Ark.; and, finally, Tulsa, Okla. There, at the Hope and Glory temple, seeking the blessing and cure of a televangelist (Nathan Holland), Violet seeks a divine makeover. In both senses of “divine.”

Two Violets share the stage, the adult version and the 13-year-old incarnation, played here by Ashley Weber. Violet, we learn, is disfigured by a run-in with a flying ax blade, owing to an accident involving her father (Richard Kinsey). Now in her 20s, her father dead, Violet has gathered up the courage to leave her mountain town and seek transformation.

On the bus to Tulsa she falls in with two soldiers bound for Fort Smith. Monty (Troy Britton Johnson), who is white, becomes her lover. Flick (Kingsley Leggs), who is black, remains Violet’s friend, despite a lot of scrapping, though--in a departure from Betts’ short story--Violet and Flick eventually land in each other’s arms.

It’s tough to buy, and not merely because of the story’s time and place (the South, 1964) and glanced-upon interracial tensions. On its own musical storytelling terms, “Violet” more or less plunks its heroine down into a happy ending without laying the emotional groundwork. Librettist and lyricist Brian Crawley’s work is diffuse, muffled; early on, he doesn’t let us get to know Violet--to see things from her socially exiled perspective. Also, the authors’ wishes (granted here) to ignore any literal or symbolic suggestion of disfigurement is a mixed blessing. You’re damned if you go with the scar, and damned if you don’t. The unfortunate effect of going without: Violet’s self-image problems appear oddly mundane, as if she were suffering from a bout of moderate-to-low self-esteem.

I like a lot of Jeanine Tesori’s music, though. It doesn’t jump down your throat, or your auditory canal. It reveals taste and subtlety, as did Tesori’s score for “The First Picture Show,” recently at the Mark Taper Forum. Here she draws on a wide vocabulary, including boogie-shuffle, blues, gospel and country-swing influences.

Berry’s Violet quietly takes the lead in director-choreographer Sha Newman’s easygoing-to-a-fault staging. Berry’s plain-spoken charisma works well in this role. The voices around her generally are worth hearing, too, notably those of Leggs, Shawana Kemp and DeBorah Sharpe. Though effective in practical terms--scenes change with admirable speed, from bus to bus station to boarding house--Dwight Richard Odle’s scenery favors an indistinct, pastel palette that screams out Radisson Hotel Color Scheme. The look’s ill-suited to this heroine’s milieu. She’s not pastel.

* “Violet,” Laguna Playhouse, 606 Laguna Canyon Road (Highway 133), Laguna Beach. Tuesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m. Ends Oct. 10. $31 to $40. (949) 497-2787. Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes.

Sarah Uriarte Berry: Violet

Kingsley Leggs: Flick

Troy Britton Johnson: Monty

Richard Kinsey: Father

Nathan Holland: Preacher

Ashley Weber: Young Vi

Helen Geller: Old Lady

P.M. Howard: Leroy Evans

Shawana Kemp: Mabel

Bruce Linser: Creepy Guy

DeBorah Sharpe: Landlady

Music by Jeanine Tesori. Book and lyrics by Brian Crawley. Directed and choreographed by Sha Newman. Musical director Diane King Vann. Set and costumes by Dwight Richard Odle. Lighting by Paulie Jenkins. Sound by David Edwards. Stage manager Nancy Staiger.