Carousel - 24 Shows Down, 76 to Go

Carousel is the great comeback story of American musical theater. Rodgers and Hammerstein insist this was their favorite musical collaboration, but Oklahoma is more renowned.  Save "You'll Never Walk Alone," none of the music really stuck. Its most remarkable facet is its tragedy, which was downright risky in 1945 Broadway. 

Fifty years later, the show enjoyed a US tour and became a staple of community theater. The Broadway revival in 2002 hit the perfect note for New York City's "up by the bootstraps" moment.  Court Theatre's production is more intimate than most, in an Equity house of around 200 seats, retaining the Chautauqua feel of its late 19th Century New England setting. Set in a nameless, hardscrabble 'clamming' town where the arrival of the traveling Carousel and its charismatic barker Billy Bigelow spells trouble for the otherwise pure hearted (read: repressed) ladies of the town. His romance with Julie gets her fired and, as he's not exactly family man material, they struggle. When he's not arranging a big score, he's taking his frustrations out on his wife. Following a series of well choreographed numbers at the clambake which opens Act II, Billy's botched criminal scheme gets him killed.

The show loses some steam getting to its transcendent finale, where Billy arrives at Heaven's Gate and receives a Capra-esque chance at tragic and hopeful redemption. He meets the daughter he will never know (from beyond the grave...), then inspires her to move on and rejoin the society which is shunning her. This sounds corny, but it works: at her graduation, she holds her head high and joins the chorus for the rousing finale "You'll Never Walk Alone." So the book is problematic, the music is fun, but the intimate staging and earthy, dynamite performances redeem the production.