New 'Carousel' Enters A New Era

[MamasDoin'Fine]

Leeds.
Leeds Grand Theatre
2nd - 19th May 2012

London.
The Barbican Centre
15th Aug - 15th Sep 2012

Salford Quays, Manchester.
The Lowry
23rd - 26th May 2012


Voted best musical of the 20th century by Time Magazine, Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel features some of the most powerful music ever written for the stage, including the immortal 'You'll Never Walk Alone', 'If I Loved You' and the joyful 'June is bustin' out all over'. A story of true love and the tragedy of feelings left unspoken, this classic American musical is deeply touching and will capture your heart.

The stellar cast, Chorus and Orchestra of Opera North will be under the expert baton of James Holmes. Directed by Jo Davies, whose Ruddigore became an instant hit, with designs by Anthony Ward (Peter Grimes, La Boheme) and choreography by the renowned Kim Brandstrup, this will be a remarkably fresh interpretation of Carousel for the 21st century.




With so many of today’s musicals selling themselves more on ball-breaking spectacle and deafening amplification than memorable songs and honest emotions, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 'Carousel' may seem almost embarrassingly old-school. Rich in impassioned melody (You’ll Never Walk Alone, If I Loved You, the merry-go-round waltz theme) and charged with moral uplift, it deals with nothing more glamorously exotic than the need for courage and endurance and the struggles that ordinary people have to do their best by those they love.
It’s a show that can make the driest of eyes moisten and the tone-deaf want to sing.

Time magazine crowned it “the greatest musical of the 20th century” and Richard Rodgers confessed that he found the score “more satisfying than any I’ve ever written”.

A superb production by Nicholas Hytner at the National Theatre in 1992 reminded British audiences of its unique power and confirmed its classic status; 20 years on, it receives another endorsement as Opera North becomes the first British opera company to present it, in a new staging to be directed by Jo Davies and designed by Anthony Ward.

Yet for all its overwhelmingly direct impact, 'Carouse'l poses several problems, and Opera North is taking some brave risks in an attempt to solve them.
Like its predecessor 'Oklahoma!' and its successor 'South Pacific', both score and book suffer from excessive length and awkward proportions, so Davies is making significant cuts (including the hornpipe in the first act) to mould the material into a smoother shape.
Towards the end, she is also reducing what she describes as “the zig-zagging between heaven and earth”, as the ghost of the fairground barker Billy Bigelow looks down on his teenage daughter, overseen by a sententious supernatural character called the Star Keeper. “I don’t want him seeming like God on a cloud,” Davies adds. “So he’s going to seem more like a cross between Cecil B de Mille and Alfred Hitchcock.”

She is also updating the setting by a generation.
The libretto specifies a beginning in post-bellum 1873 and a conclusion in the carpetbagging year of 1888, but at Opera North the period will be moved to 1915 to 1930. “I think this will make the plot seem less distant to modern audiences, as well as helping to suggest what I think the text implies about changes in the position of women,” Davies explains.
“Pictorially, it allows a cleaner, rougher edge, too. Anthony Ward and I have plumped for a weathered, home-grown Shaker look. We want to get rid of all those Victorian flounces and frills which can hinder the flow of energy on stage. This is a musical play about ordinary working people: it mustn’t seem genteel.”

But the heart of the show will be beating hard, she insists. It’s important to remember that 'Carousel' was written and premiered during the last months of the Second World War, when everyone in the audience would have felt a raw and immediate relationship with its focus on love and loss.
“Hammerstein felt that there were too many artists around expounding a waste-land philosophy, and he wanted to redress the balance,” Davies says. “I don’t think 'sentimental’ and 'romantic’ are bad words in this context.”

The production’s casting is very daring, too, as Davies has avoided obvious choices for the leading roles in favour of fresh and largely unknown young talent. Perhaps the show’s most controversial element will be the casting of the black American baritone Eric Greene as Billy Bigelow. Greene represents yet another piece of outsider casting: he has never appeared in a musical before, and didn’t know anything about 'Carouse'l beyond a couple of the big tunes when he dropped by for a non-specific audition with Opera North following appearances in March with Birmingham Opera Company.
Snapped up just as he was about to return to the US, his skin colour and charismatic stage personality will open a new dimension in the plot’s dramatic and psychological dynamics.

For both Claire Boulter and Gillene Herbert, the leading roles of Carrie Pipperidge and her friend Billy’s abused wife Julie Jordan will be a particularly big break. Boulter has been in the business for only three years, “doing bits and bobs”, and was originally auditioning as an extra for the show’s run at the Barbican Centre in June when she was pulled out of the line by Opera North’s legendary planning director Christine Chibnall.
Herbert has been a member of Opera North’s chorus since 2006, but she and Davies first worked together “years ago” when Gillene was a teenager with the National Youth Music Theatre and she subsequently appeared in a small role in Davies’s hit Opera North production of Ruddigore.
She remains amazed to have won the part of Julie against stiff competition, but seems to be rising to the challenge. Are her colleagues just a tiny bit murderously jealous?
“Well, if they are, they’re doing a brilliant job of hiding it. It’s a cliché, I know, but the Opera North chorus really is a family and I feel inspired by the support I’m getting.”

[FrontRowDress]

Well it looks stunning and it's beautifully sung as you'd expect, but I really couldn't cope with the domestic violence and the second act seemed interminable. I know it's sacrilege but I wonder if the R&H estate would ever consider a revision of the book. We got bumped up from £12.50 gallery seats to top price stalls by the way if anyone's thinking that it's too expensive.

PS Come back Mama.
Carousel

[AddisonMizner]

I'd love to see this production, but don't think I will be able to get to it before it finishes. It is one of Rodgers and Hammerstein's best in my opinion. The score is absolutely glorious and has some of my favourite songs ever written, including "Soliloquy" and especially " What's the Use of Wond'rin'?"

I understand why some people find the "when he hit me, it felt like a kiss" line uncomfortable. I just think that Billy is such an emotionally stunted character that he cannot show Julie he loves her in the right way. This is shown in the "If I loved you" scene. They cannot say the words "I love you" to one another because they are not emotionally aware as they are young and naive, so they just project this situation onto themselves and this pervades their entire relationship. In some perverse way, Billy hitting Julie is the only way for him to let these emotions out, as it is the only way he knows how and she knows this. To me, that is why she says this line. The same is true when Billy hits his daughter at the end of the show. He just doesn't know how to express his feelings in the correct way so just retreats to what he knows best. This is what makes Billy's final "If I loved you" reprise so beautiful and heart-wrenching, as he finally finds the words to tell Julie he loves her.

[FrontRowDress]

That's basically the problem, the attempt at justifying Billy hitting his wife and daughter simply because he can't express his feelings and them being complicit in their acceptance. That sits awkwardly with me, actually it appals me and I would think a lot of others. The score is undeniably gorgeous and as i said, this is the most visually beautiful production I think I have ever seen.

[bob8rich]

I don't think there is an attempt to "justify" Billy hitting Julie. It just gives the show an added dimension of realism, making the lead character a shade of grey and perhaps more believable. It also makes What's The Use Of Wond'ring even more poignant and powerful (and it is my absolute favourire R & H song, and one of my favourite songs by anyone) - and that song basically defines the show.

I think Carousel is R & H's masterwork and one of the greatest musicals of all time - certainly one of the shows which most influenced the development of musical theatre writing into what it has become today (Hammerstein was a bona fide genius and the father of modern musical theatre). The park bench scene (written around If I Love You) is still one the most exquisitely brilliant pieces of writing in musical theatre - basically a master class in how to write a musical theatre song and scene.

Having said all that, I'm not going to be able to get to see this (just can't fit another trip to London in before it closes) - and I'm gutted!

[abitoftap]

I agree with bob8rich. Showing something doesn't condone it. It gives more depth when a character who you may sort of like does bad things, and you try and understand why. If everyone on stage only did good things, you'd have no drama at all!
A fiend and his wife who aren't really musical people went to see this in Leeds and loved it.
If only Opera North still came to Norwich.....

[ClapYo'Hands]

Looking forward to seeing this on Thursday! Perhaps we'll be lucky enough to be upgraded too!

[luke-h***]

"When he hit me it felt like a kiss" obviously has those connotations, but he is a ghost at that moment in the show, so there is that view of it too.

It's probably one of my favourites; actually, it definitely is. Such a brave thing to include in a musical - especially in that era - But I would not call it a show about wife-beating. You don't feel sympathy or raw emotion for Billy in the end, probably because he hits his wife. But I certainly feel pity; that he never has any way to fix it. And there is definitely never any attempt to justify what Billy does.

Incidentally; this production is absolutely stunning. So so amazing. Seeing it again Thursday. Hooray!

[mallardo]

The Nicholas Hytner production of Carousel is still the single greatest evening I have ever spent in a theatre. When this show is done well there is nothing that comes close to it.

[dgjbear]

I haven't seen this production, but agree the National Theatre production in the 90s was incredible.

[bob8rich]

The NT production was brilliant. But the best production of Carousel I've ever seen was a Mountview student production in the Bridewell, which captured the powerful but darkly touching heart of the piece better than anything I've seen. And Connie Fisher was seriously fantastic as Julie Jordan.

[Phantom of London]

I saw Carousel this afternoon and firstly a big thank you to frontrowcentre, I took your advice, but had to buy a ticket my ticket for £22, but I am not complaining, got bumped up to the stalls, to great advice.

Who could be picky about one of the best shows of the 20th century and I am not going to start, written by two grand-masters, a true thoroughbred classical Broadway musical, done with excellent performances, by no one in the cast I was aware of before, which is always a treat.

[Outoftowner2]

Saw this today. I enjoyed it and I was moved by it.
Staging is great. Singing is great. Acting is not as good
as singing at times. Wonderful few hours at the theatre.