Playwright: Rodgers & Hammerstein, after Ferenc Molnar
At: Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis
Phone: 773-753-4472; $32-$54
Runs through: April 13
BY JONATHAN ABARBANEL
Musical compositions can be analyzed intellectually, but in performance their combinations of melody, rhythm and tonality are overwhelmingly emotional. Music affects audiences in visceral, non-verbal ways. We don't decide to tap our toes; we just do. A melody signals a love song before the lyrics tell us. The essence of music is emotion. If you don't accept that, don't do musical theater. For six years, Court Theatre Artistic Director Charles Newell has staged musicals in ways that tell me he doesn't understand, or worse doesn't trust, the power of music.
My musical disagreement with Newell may continue in the future, but I lay it aside to praise his achievement with Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel. He and musical director Doug Peck don't go as far as I wish, but more than ever before Newell finds a balance of ideas and feeling and vigorous staging to illuminate the work as he wants, but also to allow its inherent musical emotionalism to sweep the house.
Freely adapted from a European play, Carousel is set on the 1880's Maine seacoast where handsome and self-centered carnival barker Billy Bigelow meets self-possessed and determined mill worker Julie Jordan. Their love and marriage is meteoric and brief, and ends with a ghostly Billy learning lessons in death he didn't grasp in life. The perfection of Hammerstein's script and lyrics—superb craftsmanship disguised as folksiness—is matched by Rodgers' most symphonic score, which at times achieves Mozartian rapture and profundity.
Perhaps Carousel is so perfect and powerful that even Charlie can't tamp it down, try as he might. But I'd rather think he's learned things about music and musical theater he didn't understand even two years ago, because Newell is an engaging guy and a smart director.
His cast astonishes, from Nicholas Belton's handsome and dangerous Billy to Johanna McKenzie Miller's sedate but simmering Julie, from Rob Lindley's lanky Mr. Snow to the pitch-perfect Carrie Pipperidge of Jessie Mueller ( a young and prettier Carol Burnett ) . The entire ensemble acts with intimate, often gentle conviction and sings ( unamplified ) with dignified passion. Unlike his previous shows, Newell allows them to sing vs. speak most of the lyrics, finish songs with musical buttons as written and selectively sing full-voice. One can't deny a big finish to Billy's 'Soliloquy.'
Still, Newell restricts applause at the end of numbers, not seeming to understand that it signals an audiences' investment in the show and is vital to the emotional—even cathartic—exchange between viewers and performers. Several songs are sung in less-than-full voices to limit the distinction between speech and song, which suggests that Newell still doesn't fully trust the score.
His players are almost constantly in motion in savvy, complex staging and tableaux that sweep the wide Court stage. Similar to other recent interpretations Newell emphasizes Billy's bully side, and the New England work ethic vs. the rise of leisure. Newell cuts most of the dance music as have many directors before him. Peck's string-and-woodwind orchestrations—and his players—are delicately superb.
I have reservations, but this Carousel is beautiful. It works and you'll cry. Go see it.