Sutton Foster shows different shades in 'Violet'

NEW YORK — Maybe it's something in the water, but a number of musical theater's leading leading ladies have made distinctly bold choices this season. We've seen Kelli O'Hara play a middle-aged Italian housewife, Audra McDonald tackle Billie Holiday and Idina Menzel juggle two conflicted women who happen to share one body.

Now it's Sutton Foster's turn. In the new Roundabout Theatre Company production of Violet (* * * out of four stars) that opened Sunday at Broadway's American Airlines Theatre, the preternaturally sunny two-time Tony Award winner is cast as a young woman whose face was disfigured in a childhood accident. The wholesomely pretty Foster wears no makeup, so we don't see the mark that is supposed to slash across Violet's right cheek, but she refers early on to the "axe blade" that "split my face in two," explaining the uneasy way others look at her — and her apparent embitterment.

Jeanine Tesori and Brian Crawley's musical, adapted from Doris Betts' short story The Ugliest Pilgrim, follows Violet's bus journey from a small town in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina to Tulsa, Okla., where a charismatic preacher will, she hopes, heal her physical scar, and thus her spirit. En route, she meets two young soldiers, one white (like her) and one black — a distinction worth noting, as the show is set in 1964 in the South.

What transpires is, well, not entirely unpredictable, but quietly affecting and lovingly staged by director Leigh Silverman. Originally presented off-Broadway in 1997, Violet has the intimate feel of a chamber piece, so the vast space here doesn't seem like an ideal setting. Crawley's sensitive dialogue can drag at times — as can Tesori's rootsy score, which veers from country-flavored ballads to R&B and gospel-tinged production numbers.

But Silverman and her cast reward our patience with performances that transcend clichés, taking care to make the fragility of these characters, and their different quests for dignity and love, authentic. Colin Donnell, previously seen with Foster in the Roundabout's blithe 2011 revival of Anything Goes, gives Monty, the white soldier, a caddish edge while gradually revealing his softer, deeper feelings.

A robust Joshua Henry plays the black soldier, Flick, with great tenderness, making his wounded pride and other hidden or conflicted emotions palpable at all times. Alexander Gemignani brings a similar mix of power and reserve to the role of Violet's father, who appears in flashback scenes that sometimes overlap with present action and also feature an endearing, hearty-voiced Emerson Steele as a young Violet.

The leading lady, not surprisingly, meets the challenges posed by her role — which proves a nice showcase for the folkier, more nuanced quality Foster's singing can take on when she's not belting to the back rows. Not that you'll have any problem hearing her here, or appreciating the courage and passion she brings to her latest star turn.