Carousel

OK - let’s start with the elephant in the room.  The storyline in this classic Rogers and Hammerstein musical from the 40s, to put it bluntly, sucks.  The male lead, Billy Bigelow, hits his wife.  In spite of that, his wife won’t leave and stays with him literally past the end.  After Billy kills himself to avoid going to prison, the universe gives him a second chance to go back to earth to try to put his now-15 year old daughter on the straight and narrow.  He proceeds to hit her as well but the universe keeps at it and eventually, for doing a really minor kindness, let’s Billy in to heaven after all.  The message of this piece is really terrible - it would never get off the drawing board in today’s world and rightfully so.

That said, it is a Rogers and Hammerstein classic.  Unfortunately, that leads to the second elephant in the room - the acting in the show really isn’t all that good.  None of the three leads impressed although the second-banana couple played by Lindsay Mendez and Alexander Gemignani were great.  The rest of the supporting cast was so-so.  

In spite of all of that, this was a pretty good evening of theater.  First of all the sets were just beautiful.  With shows like Anastasia and Mean Girls making such great use of displays and projections, it was nice to see a show built with old fashioned sets.  The carousel itself descended from the ceiling and unfolded from a narrow tube to a terrific, stylized carnival ride.  Pieces slid in, flew in and were carried in to great effect.  Just the staging would have made the show worth seeing.

Then there was Justin Peck’s choreography.  From the minute the curtain went up, the stage was filled with accomplished dancers making beautiful pictures.  The lead dancers Amar Ramasar as Jigger and Brittany Pollack as Louise were just gorgeous.  Neither could act much but who cared.  Just the dancing would have made the show worth seeing.

And then there was the music.  The R&H score is full of old, familiar songs like If I Loved You and Mister Snow.  The voices (and the dancing) made it really easy to both understand and forgive the somewhat shaky acting.  After Beautiful and Waitress, this show really gave Jessie Mueller a chance to show off her strong soprano voice.  Every time Joshua Henry sang, you forgot about pretty much everything other than him.  And to sit a few dozen feet away and hear Renee Fleming sing You’ll Never Walk Along (twice!) was amazing.  Just the singing would have made the show worth seeing.

Bottom line - if you love good old fashioned Broadaway shows and you can stomach the plot, this is one I’d recommend.  Because of the plot and the acing, I can’t go more than a 7 for it but I definitely enjoyed this much more than I expected.

Oh and finally a legit celebrity sighting!  As we’re leaving our seats, who should walk up the aisle to say hello to the guys in the pit?  Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber!