It looks like two-time Tony winner Sutton Foster will return to Broadway as the title character in Violet. Word is the Jeanine Tesori-Brian Crawley musical will play the Roundabout Theatre Company's American Airlines Theatre this spring. Foster, who starred in Tesori's Thoroughly Modern Millie and Shrek the Musical, headlined (and won her second Tony) in Roundabout's revival of Anything Goes.
Foster previously performed in Violet, directed by Leigh Silverman, in July for a one-night-only engagement at New York City Center’s Encores! Off-Center. That production also featured Joshua Henry, Van Hughes, Austin Lesch, Anastacia McCleskey, Keala Settle, Christopher Sieber, Emerson Steele, Chris Sullivan, Rema Webb and Paul Whitty with the gospel choir, Songs of Solomon. Though Henry and Steele have been tapped to join Foster in the production, there is no confimation yet on which cast members will join the Broadway incarnation of the show.
Violet is set in the deep South of 1964 and concerns the relationship between a physically scarred young white woman and a young black soldier.
Foster is a two‐time Tony Award winner for her performances in Anything Goes and Thoroughly Modern Millie. The Broadway.com Audience Choice Award winner has also appeared on the Great White Way in Young Frankenstein, The Drowsy Chaperone, Little Women, Les Miserables, Annie, The Scarlet Pimpernel and Grease. She headlined the short-lived ABC Family series Bunheads.
Violet, directed by Susan H. Schulman and choreographed by Kathleen Marshall, premiered off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in 1997 with a cast led by Lauren Ward and Michael McElroy. It won the Lortel Award and Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Musical, among other accolades.
Watch a clip of Foster in the Encores! production of Violet below.