Carousel was the first show Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote after their smash debut, Oklahoma!, and it doesn't have any of that Oklahoma! sunshine or happiness or straw-hatted glad-to-be-alive anything. It conspicuously lacks an exclamation point.
One of the weirder parts (and there's a long list of weird parts) is a song called "This Was a Real Nice Clambake." According to the internet, it was originally written for Oklahoma! as a song called "A Real Nice Hayride," and then cut from Oklahoma!, and then later Rodgers and Hammerstein were all, "Let's just repurpose that hay song and make it about clams." There's another song in which a woman sings that fish "is her favorite perfume." It gets weirder. Confusions proliferate.
A friend who saw the show in previews texted me beforehand to give his opinion that "honestly it was kind of messed up."
I asked: Messed up how?
He texted back, "Like, performed beautifully. Set was beautiful. But the story itself has such strange morals." And sure enough, you sit through the show, and halfway through act two, you start going: Am I missing something? Is this really what this show is?
Evidently, Rodgers and Hammerstein set themselves a task to write a show about characters you wouldn't normally root for, and try to make you root for them. They include a dim-witted carnival barker who quits his job so he can hook up with a small-town mill girl (who loses her job for hooking up with the barker). One of them tries to commit a crime, and fails, and so commits a suicide instead. But first, before that, pregnancy and wife-beating. The ending is confusingly upbeat. Every man who beats his wife gets his own star in the sky, or something? It's a little hard to follow. It made more sense only when I went home and read that the show is based on a much darker Hungarian melodrama called Liliom (1909) that Rodgers and Hammerstein tried to make not quite so depressing at the end. They were moderately successful. Although it's safe to say the ending doesn't make any sense at all.
This is a 5th Avenue Theatre production, so a couple things are givens: The singing is fantastic (especially the singing done by Billie Wildrick and Laura Griffith), the Spectrum Dance Company dancers are awesome (as is the choreography by Donald Byrdâchoreography that's somehow fishy and patriarchal), and the 23-piece orchestra is cause to continue living. If you're looking for a play about how, after you die, you may look back on what you did during your life regretfully, I'd recommend seeing Our Town over Carousel. (Seriously, guys, that production of Our Town... and that closes this weekend, so get on it!)
But if you want to experience an oddity of the American musical-comedy canonâTime magazine named Carousel the best musical of the 20th century (?!)âthere's a lot here to admire and enjoy and be perplexed by. I can't get the songs out of my head.
Just keep in mind: It was written back in the day when audiences still didn't know that beating your wife (or your daughter, orâwhy not?âboth!) is not cool. They had to be taught that.