Violet

VIOLET is a multi award-winning musical based on the short story The Ugliest Pilgrim by Doris Betts. Music by Jeanine Tesori (Tony Award winner for Best Original Score with Lisa Kron for the musical Fun Home, and Tony nominated scores for Caroline, Or Change, Shrek The Musical and Thoroughly Modern Millie), Book & Lyrics by Brian Crawley. VIOLET premiered Off-Broadway and won the Drama Critics' Circle Award and Lucille Lortel Award as Best Musical, before a Broadway revival where it was nominated for four Tony Awards. This is the UK premiere.


1964. Somewhere between North Carolina and Oklahoma, we find Violet, a young woman who 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.

Creative team: Director Shuntaro Fujita, Choreographer Cressida Carré, Set Design Morgan Large, Costume Jonathan Lipman, Lighting Howard Hudson, Sound Andrew Johnson, Music Director Dan Jackson, Associate Music Director Chris Ma, Production Supervisor Thom Southerland

Casting: Kaisa Hammarlund as Violet, Matthew Harvey as Monty, Jay Marsh as Flick, Simbi Akande, Angelica Allen, Kenneth Avery-Clark, Keiron Crook, James Gant, Danny Michaels, Janet Mooney, with Amy Mepham, Rebecca Nardin and Madeleine Sellman as Young Violet

Producers: Steven M Levy and Vaughan Williams for Charing Cross Theatre Productions Limited, in a co-production with Umeda Arts Theatre Co Ltd, Osaka, Japan

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The Human Voice / The Seven Deadly Sins

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The Human Voice / The Seven Deadly Sins
One woman, one journey, two operas...

The Seven Deadly Sins, with music by Kurt Weill and libretto by Bertolt Brecht, is a biting and sharp-edged satire of ambition and self-betrayal, set to a score steeped in Weimar cabaret and 1930s American jazz. Anna is split into two halves of one soul as her family sends her on a seven-year odyssey through the cities of America, chasing the money for a house back home. 

The Human Voice, with music by Francis Poulenc and libretto by Jean Cocteau, is a harrowing one-woman opera, unfolding through a single, unbroken phone call that becomes the last conversation of a love affair. Alone in her apartment, Elle waits for her former lover to ring, and when he finally does, the small talk gives way to something far darker. Poulenc’s score moves with the broken rhythm of speech itself, tender and devastating by turns. As the call falters and reconnects, one question presses harder than any other: how do you say goodbye to someone who is already gone? 

Performed together, these works trace a continuous psychological portrait of a woman pushed to her limits — one through the cities of an American odyssey, the other through the silences of a single phone line. Both pair celebrated composers with extraordinary literary collaborators: Weill with Brecht, and Poulenc with Cocteau. 

10 performances only!

CREATIVES

The 7 Deadly Sins
Kurt Weill - Music
Bertolt Brecht - Libretto
English translation by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman
Director - Alejandro Bonatto
Musical Director - Adrian Salinero
Starring - Katherine McIndoe, Harry Grigg, Phil Wilcox, Kepa Malgorzata, Elspeth Wilkes

The Human Voice
Francis Poulenc - Music
Jean Cocteau - Libretto
English language translation by Joseph Machlis
Director - Alejandro Bonatto
Musical Director - Elspeth Wilkes
Starring - Katherine McIndoe, Adrian Salinero


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