By Amanda Knox

I’ll be the first to admit that ArtsWest productions usually blow me away. This season has been both entertaining and thought-provoking about a subject that is particularly relevant in an election year, the American Dream. My top three favorites, Greenday’s American Idiot started the season off with a bang, turning the theatre inside out and taking the audience on a wild ride through post-9/11 millennial melancholy. My Mañana Comes was a riveting and real drama, pitting American dreams against each other. Really Really revealed the harsh and complicated reality of how American youth consume and take advantage of each other.

Violet is supposed to be a kind of feel good, middle-America, Cinderella story. Disfigured girl seeks unattainable beauty, finds love instead. Because she’s beautiful on the inside.

Except none of it is convincing. And warning: the following paragraph is spoiler. Violet is disfigured at thirteen by taking her father’s ax blade to the face, an accident that is just hard to picture. Then, Violet’s character is a confusing combination of innocent/pure-hearted, or at least, she’s gullible enough to believe a televangelist has the power to heal her, and worldly/jaded—she’s suspicious of anyone who lays eyes on her and can play a mean hand of poker. The combination of these two contradicting characteristics means that Violet is, if anything, utterly sincere, and this is supposedly enough to cause two handsome, womanizing army cadets to fall desperately in love with her, despite her disfigurement and in spite of each other. Then, when the televangelist doesn’t heal her, Violet doesn’t grow as a person or learn anything. She breaks down and melts into the arms of one of the army cadets—the sensitive one who’s black and “knows what it’s like”—a man to replace her father.

I’m not enthused. I’m not inspired. I kept guessing that there would be some twist that would throw the whole predictable plot off kilter—like, what if the televangelist had indeed “fixed” her face? Or even, what if her disfigurement was actually a figment of her imagination? What kind of play would it have been then? But no, nothing like that happened.

Not only that, but every song was disappointingly static, with nothing at stake, holding out a single emotional note for a few minutes. Which isn’t to say that the music was bad, just the content. The music was actually quite good and performed brilliantly. The musicians and actors came together very professionally in their performance. Brenna Wagner, playing Violet, had a particularly impressive and powerful voice.

But then the choreography was off! At various points, when the ensemble was not participating in the action on the stage, they were directed in what looked like silly, over-stylized puppetry that didn’t inform and only distracted from the main action onstage.

Altogether, Violet the musical is a rare disappointment in the midst of ArtsWest’s long line of impressive, thought-provoking, emotionally-moving productions. Go to witness and support the musical prowess of the cast, but don’t go to feel inspired.

Violet plays March 3 – April 3, 2016 at ArtsWest Theatre (4711 California Ave. SW Seattle, WA 98116), Wednesdays – Saturdays at 7:30pm, Sundays at 3:00pm . Tickets are on sale now and may be purchased online at www.artswest.org or by phone at 206.938.0339, or at the box office.