Annika Isbell, Tom Reed (in rear), and Cast Photo by Tom Wallace

The Thousand Things is well into its fourth decade of staging musicals in a manner that makes them portable enough to present, free of charge, to audiences usually unable to access live theatre, including detention centers, homeless shelters, rehab programs, inner city senior centers, and adult learning sites. Additional performances before paying audiences employ the same spare esthetics and direct storytelling. The effect never fails to grab right at the heart of audience members, removing all artifice so that nothing but shear honesty is transmitted from actor to audience.

Violet is a young woman with a hideous scar on her face. The story is set in 1964 and begins in the small town of Spruce Pine, North Carolina, tucked into the Southern Appalachians. Violet's mother died when she was quite young, and her father, as we see in flashback scenes with Violet's younger self, was fairly inept at raising a daughter, but he tried, in his way. One unlucky day, his axe blade flew off the handle, striking Violet in the face. From that day on Violet was mercilessly ostracized by her small-minded classmates, and adults looked away from her grotesque visage. She suffered at their hands, but also from a constant quest to know why she was made to suffer this calamity and whether it was actually an accident.

After Violet's father dies, she saves up to ride the Greyhound Bus to Tulsa. There she will have the preacher she has seen perform miracles on television heal her scar and free her to live a "normal" life. On the bus she meets a pair of soldiers heading to Fort Smith, Arkansas: Monty, who is a bit full of himself–and white; and Flick, who is more introspective and uncertain–and Black. The two have a friendly competition between them, which soon extends to winning Violet's attention.

After an eventful overnight stop in Memphis, then saying goodbye to Flick and Monty in Fort Smith, Violet reaches Tulsa. She find the television preacher rehearsing with the choir and one of the afflicted petitioning for a miracle, for his next service. For the first time, Violet questions whether what the preacher does is conduct a service or put on a show. She takes matters into her own hands, drawing on her life's history to seek grace and forgiveness before she heads back to find her friends in Fort Smith.

The actor who plays Violet is not made up with a scar on her face. To us, she looks perfectly lovely. This is the real Violet, after all; the scar is an old wound. It no longer hurts–the pain she carries is in her mind, where she experiences the rejection the scar. To us, Violet looks like anyone among us who suffers within, allowing old wounds, whatever their origins, to fester and leach life away from us.

If it sounds like a flimsy basis for a full-length musical, it would be if its creative team hadn't developed the main characters with such carefully drawn nuance, if the score wasn't so well crafted, and if the narrative wasn't so rich with examples of humanity, both its strengths and frailties. Violet is not a patsy–she is brave, strong, and funny, using her quick wit to deal with the not-always pure intentions of others. Her short-sightedness is in her belief that healing comes at the end of a bus ride, and not from within. Her journey to correcting her vision, both in the present and in her reflections on her past, offers ample opportunity for a warm and richly gratifying story to unroll.

There are some references made to the issue of race, for example, Flick being bawled out by the proprietor of a boarding house in Memphis for bringing Violet, a white woman, around. Surprisingly, not as much is made of the race question as might be expected, though one thing is clear. Flick, without having to say it directly, understands how Violet feels when others look at her with disgust due to a surface condition that says nothing about who she is.

Violet was Jeanine Tesori's first produced stage work when it was mounted off-Broadway in 1997. The show won the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Musical, and Tesori was awarded an Obie citation for her music. Since then, she has created a diverse range of music for shows as different from one another as Thoroughly Modern Millie, Caroline, or Change, Shrek, and Fun Home–which, if you are fortunate, you saw in a production that just wrapped up this weekend at Theater Latté Da. For Fun Home, as well as for Kimberly Akimbo, Tesori won Tony Awards for Best Original Score. Her music in Violet goes from steam-rolling country, as in "Surprised," to a rocking "Last Time I Came to Memphis" to the bluesy "Anyone Would Do" and "Lonely Stranger," to the gospel "Raise Me Up," to "Promise Me, Violet," in the mode of a contemporary show tune, to the anthemic finale, "Bring Me to Light," and–my personal favorite–an exquisite lullaby, "Lay Down Your Head." The range is phenomenal and it's all first rate.

Annika Isbell is a glorious Violet, a crazy quilt of cheekiness, vulnerability, bitterness, and indefatigable hope, confidently giving clear, beautiful voice to Violet, with all her inconsistencies. Ryan London Levin fashions a winning portrayal of the somewhat repellant, though never deceitful Monty and brings his full strong voice to score. Gabe Woodard covered the role of Flick (for Mitchell Douglas) at the performance I attended, and gave a sensitive, strong reading of the character that easily won over the audience's–as well as Violet's–affection.

Sophina Saggau is wonderful, conveying the heartbreak of young Violet's life. On several occasions she and Isbell sing together in clear harmony, melding Violet's older and younger spirits. Charlie Clark delivers as the rather hapless father who's heart is full of love he could never express ("That's What I Could Do"). Tom Reed is a delight as the TV preacher who is very aware of his limits, and is charming as a surly Greyhound driver. Lynnea Doublette as a gospel soloist and a Memphis landlady, and Kate Beahen as an old lady who befriends Violet on the bus and a nightclub singer, add their considerable talents to the ensemble, with all but Isbell playing numerous other roles along the way.

Music director Sanford More singlehandedly, with a little help from Steve Jennings on drum tracks and Geoff LeCrone on guitar tracks, provides a full accompaniment to Violet. Sarah Bahr's simple set designs–made to fit in a van and hit the road–featureS four wooden benches, two with backrests, two without, that are rearranged to create the seats on a bus, a booth in a diner, church pews, and more, while different combinations of suitcases are piled up to form tables. Samantha Fromm Haddow's costumes are ingeniously designed for ease of actors transforming from one character to another, while Violet's modest dress–looking like it could have come off the rack of one of the old Mode O'Day stores that were a staple of 1960s small-town Main Streets–and green cardigan bring out her simplicity and normalcy obscured by a scar.

Ten Thousand Things typically stages one musical per season, In the past those have been large shows like My Fair Lady, Fiddler on the Roof, and The Music Man, which meant paring the production down from a big singing and dancing ensemble to a cast of six to eight. Violet, like last season's The Spitfire Grill, was always a small, chamber musical, so the Ten Thousand Things production is more similar in scale to other productions of Violet you may see.

You may not be familiar with Violet, for it is not a well-known title, though a revival on Broadway in 2014, based on an Encores production and starring Sutton Foster, expanded its reputation. Nonetheless, it is a wonderful show that makes a case for the saying "Good things come in small packages." Ten Thousand Things has brought it to a bright luster that is dramatically moving, musically uplifting, and altogether a joy.

Violet, a Ten Thousand Things Theater Company production, runs through June 1, 2025, at Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church, 511 Groveland Ave, Minneapolis MN. There is a 10:00 AM performance on May 14, 2025, at the South Education Center Academy, 7450 Penn Ave S, Richfield MN for free, donations appreciated. For tickets and information, please call 612-203-9502 or visit www.tenthousandthings.org.

Music: Jeanine Tesori; Book and Lyrics: Brian Crawley, based on the story "The Ugliest Pilgrim: by Doris Betts; Director: Kelli Foster Warder; Music Director: Sandford Moore; Set and Props Design: Sarah Bahr; Costume Design: Samantha Fromm Haddow; Stage Manager: Ajah Williams.

Cast: Kate Beahen (Old Lady/others), Charlie Clark (Violet's Father/others), Lynnea Doublette (Gospel Singer/others), Mitchell Douglas (Flick, a soldier/others), Annika Isbell (Violet), Ryan London Levin (Monty, a soldier/others), Madison Neal (understudy), Tom Reed (Preacher/others), Sophina Saggau (Young Violet/others), Gabe Woodard (understudy).