To steal from a different Rogers and Hammerstein musical, how do you solve a problem like Carousel?
As I asked in my review of Bedlam's Pygmalion revival, does a piece of work that is so inherently problematic and misogynist deserve a stage in 2018? I don't know. I don't have the answer to this. But I do know that had Carousel not been written by arguably the greatest musical writing team in history, it would have been lost to time.
I know much has been written about the show lately and I don't think it's unwarranted. When you strip away the beautiful score and the wonderful singing and dancing of Jack O'Brien's latest revival, what you have is the story of an abusive brute and criminal who'd rather die and abandon his family than face his responsibilities. But oh wait! He gets to redeem himself for some reason so he can spend all over eternity in Heaven. If you ask me, Billy Bigelow does not deserve redemption. He does nothing through the course of Carousel that tells me there's a good person there. And this isn't an anti-hero situation like Sweeney Todd (look, Sweeney's thirst for revenge is certainly justified). Billy's brutish behavior is totally unjustified. And honestly, Julie, girl, sex is nice but it's not worth throwing your job and livelihood away. Julie Jordan might be a queer one but she is definitely an idiot as well.
But there's much to celebrate about Carousel. Not content-wise but perhaps contextually. This is a dark musical, written at a time during which musicals weren't particularly dark. They may have had some darker elements but how many musicals written in the 1940s involved domestic violence and suicide and attempted robbery/murder? I mean, in 2018 it's hard for a dark musical to succeed on Broadway. And structurally, Carousel is experimental for the time. The protagonist dies at the top of the second act and the setting shifts to the afterlife (I can't imagine that was depicted often in 1945) and then it jumps fifteen years in time and includes a lengthy ballet sequence. I give Rogers and Hammerstein loads of credit for adapting such a challenge work.
Well, is it tone-deaf to revive Carousel in the era of #MeToo and #TimesUp? It's a question I struggle with because there's so many classic works that are problematic in 2018. I think there is a space for a show such as this one if you have a reason to revive it. You have to give audiences a reason to want to see it. And unsurprisingly, Jack O'Brien does not do much to justify a Carousel in 2018. He lends no critical eye to the text, and if his intention is to just present the musical as the authors intended, well, he fails there as well. He has chosen to cut many critical scenes and bits of dialogue and a few songs. If you ask me, the point of this current revival is to show off Justin Peck's impressive but athletic choreography. I'll admit that O'Brien's work (other than Hairspray) has never impressed me and I couldn't help but wish someone with a fresher perspective would have directed this. Maybe say...a woman? It would've been great to see someone like Diane Paulus' take on the material. Billy Bigelow is a walking embodiment of toxic masculinity and a woman's perspective on the character would've been very, very welcomed. Maybe then Julie would seem like a real human being with some sort of agency as opposed to a human incubator. (What does she do other than throw away her life to marry and excuse an abuser and then get pregnant? We know nothing else about her.)
To add more fuel to the problematic fire, Jack O'Brien has cast an actor of color, Joshua Henry, as Billy. Henry is one of my favorite musical theater actors and I think, talent-wise, he is perfectly suited for a role like Billy. But is it wise for a man of color to portray a womanizing, abusive, violent brute who can't get/keep a job and must resort to crime (and ultimately be an absentee father)? What is O'Brien trying to do here? To make matters worse, Jigger is portrayed by another performer of color, Amar Ramasar. So both characters who turn to violence and crime are not white? In 2018 it is difficult to remove any racial stereotypes from my mind to see this as color-blind casting, especially since all of the other principals are white or white passing. (It would've been great for Enoch Snow, who is an incredibly successful and eventually very wealthy, to be cast as a poc.) Especially when Black men are still being arrested for literally being being Black in public.
One can argue that Carousel beautifully written, the score is amazing, and the current cast is immensely talented with beautiful voices but the play is still the thing. Is that enough to cast it out of the musical theater canon?
As I asked in my review of Bedlam's Pygmalion revival, does a piece of work that is so inherently problematic and misogynist deserve a stage in 2018? I don't know. I don't have the answer to this. But I do know that had Carousel not been written by arguably the greatest musical writing team in history, it would have been lost to time.
I know much has been written about the show lately and I don't think it's unwarranted. When you strip away the beautiful score and the wonderful singing and dancing of Jack O'Brien's latest revival, what you have is the story of an abusive brute and criminal who'd rather die and abandon his family than face his responsibilities. But oh wait! He gets to redeem himself for some reason so he can spend all over eternity in Heaven. If you ask me, Billy Bigelow does not deserve redemption. He does nothing through the course of Carousel that tells me there's a good person there. And this isn't an anti-hero situation like Sweeney Todd (look, Sweeney's thirst for revenge is certainly justified). Billy's brutish behavior is totally unjustified. And honestly, Julie, girl, sex is nice but it's not worth throwing your job and livelihood away. Julie Jordan might be a queer one but she is definitely an idiot as well.
But there's much to celebrate about Carousel. Not content-wise but perhaps contextually. This is a dark musical, written at a time during which musicals weren't particularly dark. They may have had some darker elements but how many musicals written in the 1940s involved domestic violence and suicide and attempted robbery/murder? I mean, in 2018 it's hard for a dark musical to succeed on Broadway. And structurally, Carousel is experimental for the time. The protagonist dies at the top of the second act and the setting shifts to the afterlife (I can't imagine that was depicted often in 1945) and then it jumps fifteen years in time and includes a lengthy ballet sequence. I give Rogers and Hammerstein loads of credit for adapting such a challenge work.
Well, is it tone-deaf to revive Carousel in the era of #MeToo and #TimesUp? It's a question I struggle with because there's so many classic works that are problematic in 2018. I think there is a space for a show such as this one if you have a reason to revive it. You have to give audiences a reason to want to see it. And unsurprisingly, Jack O'Brien does not do much to justify a Carousel in 2018. He lends no critical eye to the text, and if his intention is to just present the musical as the authors intended, well, he fails there as well. He has chosen to cut many critical scenes and bits of dialogue and a few songs. If you ask me, the point of this current revival is to show off Justin Peck's impressive but athletic choreography. I'll admit that O'Brien's work (other than Hairspray) has never impressed me and I couldn't help but wish someone with a fresher perspective would have directed this. Maybe say...a woman? It would've been great to see someone like Diane Paulus' take on the material. Billy Bigelow is a walking embodiment of toxic masculinity and a woman's perspective on the character would've been very, very welcomed. Maybe then Julie would seem like a real human being with some sort of agency as opposed to a human incubator. (What does she do other than throw away her life to marry and excuse an abuser and then get pregnant? We know nothing else about her.)
To add more fuel to the problematic fire, Jack O'Brien has cast an actor of color, Joshua Henry, as Billy. Henry is one of my favorite musical theater actors and I think, talent-wise, he is perfectly suited for a role like Billy. But is it wise for a man of color to portray a womanizing, abusive, violent brute who can't get/keep a job and must resort to crime (and ultimately be an absentee father)? What is O'Brien trying to do here? To make matters worse, Jigger is portrayed by another performer of color, Amar Ramasar. So both characters who turn to violence and crime are not white? In 2018 it is difficult to remove any racial stereotypes from my mind to see this as color-blind casting, especially since all of the other principals are white or white passing. (It would've been great for Enoch Snow, who is an incredibly successful and eventually very wealthy, to be cast as a poc.) Especially when Black men are still being arrested for literally being being Black in public.
One can argue that Carousel beautifully written, the score is amazing, and the current cast is immensely talented with beautiful voices but the play is still the thing. Is that enough to cast it out of the musical theater canon?
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