Symbolism can add depth and texture or it can overwhelm a simple story.
Here, the story and the morals it offers are dealt a body blow by symbols
which, depending on how one interprets the story, highlight its shallowness
or trivialize its depth. The story, so simple on its surface but so
obviously intended to be the bearer of important comments on human
relations, is too flimsy to support singing washing machines or crooning
busses. Vocalizing inanimate objects are no stranger to the Broadway
musical stage - singing teapots worked for Disney's Beauty and the Beast
where charm and razzmatazz were required to keep the attention of the little
ones. Here, however, the intended audience is mature and intellectually
discriminating so the writing of songs for the dryer and the bus belittle a
gentle story.
Storyline: The black housekeeper in a
white Louisiana home in 1963 has troubles of her own with one son away in Vietnam,
a rebellious teenage daughter and two younger boys who are not above a bit
of mischief. She spends most of her day, not at home with her family but in
the basement of her employer washing their clothes, listening to the popular
rhythm and blues on the radio and enjoying the one cigarette she allows
herself each day. Things aren't without problems for the family of the house
either. The father has recently been widowed and has remarried but he's
still hurt and withdrawn. The in-laws are squabbling, his son isn't taking
to his new stepmother and she, fresh from northern climes wants the maid to
call her by her first name. Her approach to discipline for the son is to
tell Caroline she can keep whatever change she finds in the boy's pockets in
the wash.
Devotees of Angels in America know
just how skillfully Tony Kushner can weave multiple storylines together, and
there certainly are enough storylines here to keep him hopping with two
families full of humanly imperfect real people. So who needed the washing
machine to break into song? Those who saw his Homebody/Kabul
know how he can hang a complete show on a single central character.
(Think of the impact on the entire show of the Homebody whose monologue
opens the show but who isn't seen again.) So who needed the Moon to have a
song of her own?
It isn't that the songs for the objects
aren't good - Chuck Cooper's blues lament as the bus as he spreads the word
that President Kennedy has been assassinated captures the emotion of that
moment in national consciousness marvelously. It would have been even more
effective, however, if he didn't have headlights in his hands. The staging
trivializes his mourning "a driverless ship of state." Jeanine Tesori's
score is very good in its matching the sound of popular music of the time
and place with the needs of the story, and both Tonya Pinkins as Caroline and
Anika Noni Rose as her daughter have searing solos.
Caroline, or Change first opened at the
Off-Broadway Public Theatre where it earned high praise and walked away with
the Lucille Lortel award, the Off-Broadway equivalent of the Helen Hayes
Awards. Its transfer to a Broadway house made it eligible for the Tonys and
it has been nominated for six - Best Musical, Direction, Book, Score, Lead
Actress (Tonya Pinkins) and Featured Actress (Anika Noni Rose). It will be
interesting to see just how it does when the Tony winners are announced -
for the record, its competition for Best Musical is
Wicked, Avenue Q and
The Boy from Oz.
Book and Lyrics by Tony Kushner. Music by
Jeanine Tesori. Directed by George C. Wolfe. Choreography by Hope Clarke.
Musical direction by Linda Twine. Design: Riccardo Hernández (set) Paul
Tazewell (costumes) Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer (lights) Jon Weston
(sound) Rick Bassett, Joseph Joubert, Buryl Red (orchestrations). Cast:
Raethel Bean, Harrison Chad, Tracy Nicole Chapman, Chuck Cooper, David
Costabile, Veanne Cox, Marcus Carl Franklin, Aisha de Haas, Marva Hicks,
Capathia Jenkins, Larry Keith, Ramona Keller, Tonya Pinkins, Alice Playten,
Anika Noni Rose, Leon G. Thomas III, Chandra Wilson. |
