Dan’s Diary: The Greatest Generation’s Favorite Musical?
Posted by: Dan Shaw
Posted on: Monday, June 29, 2009
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Full Article
Though I’d argue with Time Magazine’s contention that Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel is the greatest musical of the 20th century, Julianne Boyd, the artistic director of Barrington Stage Company, has given Carousel the kind of stunning production that only a great musical deserves. Boyd’s profound affection for the show is evident in her empathetic and emphatic staging of a show that deals with the difficult issues of domestic violence and suicide. She has cast actors with powerful and delightful voices who perfectly embody their characters: Aaron Ramey, who plays Billy Bigelow, the nasty antihero carousel barker, brings down the house when he sings his “Soliloquy.” Patricia Noonan is achingly convincing as Julie Jordan, the vulnerable, stubborn millworker who falls for him.
As in Rodgers and Hammestein’s 1943 Oklahoma!, which was still playing across the street when Carousel opened on Broadway in 1945, the secondary roles are the fun ones: Julie’s best friend Carrie Pipperidge (Sara Jean Ford) is Carousel’s version of Oklahoma!‘s Ado Annie, and Enoch Snow (Todd Buonopane) is the Will Parker character, and they make you smile whenever they are on stage. Jigger Craigin (Christopher Innvar) is a variation on Ali Hakim, and Nettie Fowler (Teri Ralston) is a New England version of Aunt Eller: you can’t listen to the songs “June is Bustin Out All Over” and “A Real Nice Clambake” without thinking they are going to segue into “The Farmer and the Cowman.”
Carousel‘s DNA is integral to postwar American musical theater; after all, it was written when a teenage Stephen Sondheim was hanging out at Oscar Hammerstein’s country house in Pennsylvania and one can trace the dark elements in many Sondheim shows to Carousel‘s boy-meets-girl-but-no-one-lives-happily-ever-after story.
It’s said Carousel was the first musical to seamlessly integrate the songs and text of a musical, and every element of Boyd’s production meshes beautifully, if darkly. Robert Mark Morgan has given her an 1890s New England seaside set that feels like an Edward Hopper painting; and Joshua Bergasses’s chroreography of the deconstructed carousel horses prompted the audience to burst into applause. Scott Pinkney’s lighting is sensitive, moody and spot on. Holly Cain’s costumes make every production number look as perfectly composed as a Norman Rockwell painting
Boyd has spared no expense with this production with the exception of the non-existent orchestra. There are two piano players instead, and they sound so right that you never find yourself missing the violins or clarinets, even though many say Carousel has Rodgers & Hammerstein’s most orchestral score. (The Boston Pops performed it two summers ago at Tanglewood.) When the lights came up after the final curtain, I was surprised to find myself in the Berkshires, because everything about Barrington Stage Company’s production of Carousel made me feel like I’d been on Broadway.
