By Tony Phillips**** “You be thankful that I’m warning you,” a police officer advises the young maid Julie. “It’s nothing to me what you do. I’m not your father, thank God. But I’m telling you what kind of a fellow he is. By tomorrow morning you’ll be coming around to us to report him. Now you be sensible and go home. You needn’t be afraid of him. This officer will take you home if you’re afraid.” This quote is from Liliom, Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnár’s play detailing a carnival lothario, which tanked upon its 1909 premier in Budapest, but had more success in an English translation on Broadway in 1921.
More than two decades later, the producers of that staging as well as Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s first partnership Oklahoma!, suggested a musical adaptation of Liliom to the pair as a follow-up. Liliom became Billy Bigelow, Budapest became Maine and the ending was sweetened considerably, but Molnár was pleased. Though the Tony Awards weren’t around in 1945, this new production swept seven Donaldson Awards, including one for Rodgers & Hammerstein. The musical, retitled Carousel, has continued to reap Tonys in both of its Broadway revivals and is heading into this Sunday’s Tony telecast with 11 nominations.
The frisson of Carousel is built into this revival. Joshua Henry’s Billy is black while his love interest, Julie Jordan, played by Jesse Mueller, is white. The 78-year-old Broadway veteran Jack O’Brien’s director’s billing shares equal heft—and point size—with 30-year-old ballet star Justin Peck as choreographer. Let’s not even get into Act Two’s romanticizing of domestic abuse in the age of #MeToo. But somehow, this Carousel, by pulling in stars as diverse as opera legend Renee Fleming and New York City Ballet principal Amar Ramasar, plus Beautiful and Waitress vet Jesse Mueller, who’s been moonlighting as Seth Rudetsky’s latest cabaret muse, all hold together through the can-do prism of its multifaceted cast.
“I want to get the best people to tell the story,” is how Joshua Henry remembers Jack O’Brien explaining his casting decisions; and the veteran director certainly has, but what O’Brien left unsaid is that he wanted this top-notch talent to finally tell a version of this musical that would once and for all set it in amber. O’Brien presents a Carousel that is as classic a staging as Nicholas Hytner’s Lincoln Center import from the Royal National Theatre almost 25 years ago was pitch black. What Hytner froze in brimstone, O’Brien illuminates from within.
There are many ways to skin a cat and most of what O’Brien does is just common sense. Got a second act number that needs to operatically shake the rafters? Hire Renee Fleming to belt “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” Got a near physically impossible seven-and-a-half minute ballet in the middle of the show? Clear out the corps of New York City Ballet and get them up on the boards. But while there are innumerable ways to bend Carousel to the taste of today’s audiences, the singular challenge—and one this production pulls off spotlessly—is to present the work without the modern-day trappings and let it spin the way it was meant to gloriously spin.
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