May 15, 2018
Why should the Rodgers and Hammerstein mainstay Carousel be in revival now? Two reasons are compelling enough by default: Jack O'Brien is a director who should absolutely have a crack at it; and the last Broadway revival was almost a quarter century ago. It's time for new generations to have a crack at it too.
There is, however, a kind of mandate to revisiting this material. Because if you're not "simply" going to replicate the original staging, something else needs to be brought to the table. And the truth is, with the older R&H shows especially, there's no credibly going back to the original stylistically, because those original iterations—as you may know, if you've seen preserved excerpts from such as the old Ed Sullivan Show, or the archived films the authors had made, to serve as guidelines for future productions; and as you can sometimes tell from those very early cast albums—existed before (and a few within) the transition period in which musical theatre performing started to move to a place where, when appropriate, it would absorb the techniques and aesthetics of more realistic acting. In that period before the clear line of demarcation, particularly in shows where the characters are supposed to be multi-dimensional human beings, those dimensions were often—from our perspective—surprisingly underbalanced next to the broad strokes of what I'll call "only-essential emotion."
The incredible paradox of this is, of course, that while the roles were written to support that playing style, they would also come to support more serious investigation, because implicit in all of them was a far deeper well of subtext. Certainly, in part, this goes back to source material; in the case of Carousel to Liliom (1934), by Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnar. But it also hearkens to the fact that musical theatre elevation started to redefine its parameters, to the point where the bold, compact statement of a scene or a song was not perforce exclusive of its own version, even if only an illusion extrapolated from essence, of realistic human behavior.
The R&H breakthrough in this regard happened in that aforementioned previous revival. Director Bartlett Sher (behind the soon-to-open revival of My Fair Lady) unlocked previously unexplored values, the funny dialogue became funnier, the heartbreaking stuff hurt more, and that carried over into the songs, which were delivered far differently, and by performers who were credibly and in reality the younger age the script implies, rather than recognizable, seasoned veterans. (The most controversial part of the experiment was even the casting of a Billy Bigelow [Michael Hayden] who was not an accomplished singer, just a "regular guy' who could carry a tune. The production pulled away from that conceit with his standby and replacement, but the template for a realistic portrayal had nonetheless been set, and persisted.)
Flash forward to the present. And in that regard, Jack O'Brien's production seems an odd step backward. Nobody's quite going back to the oldschool, foursquare, plant-your-feet-and-emote style of acting‚…but there does nonetheless seem to be a stylistic disjunct: A scant few passing interpretations of non-singing characters (typified by the performances of multi-cast William Youmans in general and Margaret Colin as carnival runner Mrs. Mullin in particular) pass the verite test. As do the secondary romantic leads, Lindsay Mendez as Carrie Pipperidge and Alexander Gemignani as Enoch Snow. But the hero and heroine, Billy and Julie Jordan, as well as maternal Nettie Fowler—Joshua Henry, Jessie Mueller and opera star Renee Fleming respectively (and Ms. Fleming particularly)—have taken a more traditional path. The singing is glorious; the acting is more functional. And Amar Ramasar as the untrustworthy Jigger is perhaps miscast, maybe misdirected, but nonetheless unbelievable for making visible all the effort he puts into conveying the profile of a manipulative schemer and a womanizing cad.
Nonetheless, on balance, Mr. O'Brien hasn't hurt Carousel. His interpretation is generally accurate, faithful and loving. What, then, has he added?
He's allowed it to be, without comment, multi ethnic. (And mixed in multi-disciplinarian roots as a kind of side order.) Mr. Henry is African-American. Mr. Ramasar is an Asian-American of Trinidadian and Indian descent, whose first career marks were made in the world of ballet. Ms. Mendez's career has prominently assayed many non-ethnic roles, but in the context of this cast, the facial features that suggest the ethnic heritage of her name contribute to the diversity statement. Ms. Fleming comes from the world of opera.
This is the first Carousel to say anyone can play. In large measure, of course, this is a reflection of the times. It's not the first classic (or even at this point the first new play, musical or otherwise) to ignore color and ethnicity as barriers to inclusion. But it's the first time Rodgers and Hammerstein Americana in a major venue has embraced a multi-cultural cross section of contemporary America as a simple given.
It shouldn't seem that remarkable…yet it is. And I think that's because it has reframed a growing trend as a benchmark. It makes its statement…by not making a statement.
And that far outweighs caveats about stylistic inconsistency.
And as an I-hope not anticlimactic PS, the production offers one more revelation: the new orchestrations of Jonathan Tunick. Mr. Tunick was always at heart a classicist, with great love of tradition and the masters who orchestrated the classic scores. But when he burst upon the scene, notably with Promises, Promises in 1968 and next, spectacularly with Company in 1970, he brought to Broadway orchestration techniques of "transparency"; it's hard to describe strictly, but in general, he treated the pit orchestra as a real orchestra, letting each instrument express its own personality as much as possible. Something like an instrumental doubling was more for color than functional emphasis. He rendered piano/keyboard as but one more orchestral color, rather than as the core instrument. Was he the first to do this? Of course not; not by a long shot. But he was the first whose style seemed to codify it; and of course that was a reflection of the contemporary scores he was dealing with, first by Bacharach and then by Sondheim. But that made him the prominent, go-to guy for several decades after. And his bringing that specialty to bear on a classic R&H score…well, that seems as much a benchmark as anything else. It's a joy to hear.
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