Hey Viola! returns with its dreamlike civil-rights cabaret, at Gateway Theatre to April 22
Charismatic Krystle Dos Santos brings to life Viola Davis through a range of Nina Simone hits, gospel, jazz, and freedom songs
Photo by Murray Mitchell
Hey Viola! is at Richmond’s Gateway Theatre from April 13 to 22
HEY VIOLA!, which premiered here in 2020, is part history lesson, part character portrait, part musical revue. But as we said in our review at that time, that description doesn’t quite capture the magic that happens onstage.
That’s because added power to the piece comes care of charisma and knockout singing of performer Krystle Dos Santos as Canadian civil-rights icon Viola Desmond—who now graces our $10 bill. Dos Santos’s cocreator Tracey Power also finds fresh and original ways to mix storytelling and music, as she did in the Leonard Cohen-ode Chelsea Hotel.
Desmond, of course, is the Black woman who fearlessly refused to leave the whites-only section of Nova Scotia’s Roseland cinema in 1946—and got carted off to jail in the process. But what you might not know is that she grew up with 10 siblings and was a trailblazing businesswoman—and that’s only the beginning of her compelling story.
But what may be most interesting about this production is its almost hallucinatory, dreamlike setting. Desmond, near the end of her life on the hardwood floor of her New York apartment, suddenly finds herself performing on the cabaret stage of her old Harlem haunt, Smalls Paradise. Under late set director Drew Facey’s smashing multilight marquee, she reflects back on her life through songs and storytelling.
It's all performed with a live band. Catch it if you haven't seen it before: you'll never look at a $10 bill the same way again. As Dos Santos told Stir in an interview when the show launched, "We do more than the Heritage Minute we’ve been given."
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