Carolyn Saxon belts out a number in a performance of “Violet” at Speakeasy Stage Company. Glenn Perry photoThis weekend is your last chance to catch the Speakeasy Stage Company’s strongly reviewed production of the musical “Violet,” featuring a rafter-rattling turn by a local performer.
The Boston Globe’s Don Aucoin dubbed “Violet,” with Alison McCartan in the title role, as “the first must see show of 2016.” He singles out for praise Dorchester’s “Carolyn Saxon as a landlady and a gospel singer, nearly stopping the show with her rousing rendition of ‘Raise Me Up.’ ’’
Part of what makes this uplifting production so compelling is that even the supporting cast members are extraordinarily talented and experienced. Saxon, for example, has been in a couple of Woody Allen movies as well as in a string of productions on Broadway. She explains her role in this show, which features a powerful folk, rock, and gospel score by Jeanine Tesori, who won the 2014 Tony Award for Best Original Score for “Fun Home”:
“ Violet is the story of a young girl who takes a journey on a bus across the Southern US in 1964 in order to have her scar healed by a televangelist she’s seen on TV. I play a landlady who runs a boarding house in Memphis, and I also play Lula who is a lead singer on the televangelist’s faith healing program. It’s a hoot. I get the chance to share the stage with a ton of gospel singers with which I’ve had the pleasure of performing all over town in all sort of venues – this time in a theatrical storytelling setting. It’s been lots of fun crossing the streams.”
Before she and her partner Jamie moved to Dorchester in 2011, Saxon had racked up a very impressive list of credits on the Great White Way. “On Broadway I appeared in the Encore City Center productions of ‘Hair’, ‘Purlie’, and ‘Can-Can.’ I also appeared in ‘Linda Eder: The Christmas Concert’ at the old Palace Theater and at Carnegie Hall. I did two Broadway National Tours: ‘The Civil War’ and ‘Bring In Da Noise, Bring In Da Funk.’ ”
As if that were not enviable enough, Saxon explains what it was like to work in “The Curse of the Jade Scorpion” with film auteur Woody Allen: “He’s interesting because he doesn’t talk to you unless you do something he specifically doesn’t want you to do. You’re pretty much just relying on the script and hoping he likes what you’re doing. I wondered why he kept hiring me but never asked him. ‘Woody just thinks you’re funny,’ the casting director told me later.
“Violet” is definitely a show about second chances. It’s part of Speakeasy’s 25th Anniversary Season, with producing artistic director Paul Daigneault revisiting one of his company’s most fondly remembered hits. He directed the local premiere of the original off-Broadway version in 2000. This time around in Boston, Daigneault is staging his take on the revised Broadway version, which last year was honored with a slew of award nods.
SpeakEasy Stage Company is the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion Resident Theatre Company at the Boston Center for the Arts.
