Theater Review

Long Wharf’s ‘Carousel’ Is Breathtaking

By Julie Stern

NEW HAVEN — When Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel premiered in New York in April 1945, it was unique in a number of ways. Unlike traditional “musical comedies,” this tale of the New England factory girl and the roughneck carousel barker is essentially tragic, with the “hero,” Billy Bigelow, dying halfway though the story, on the same day he learns that his wife of two months is pregnant with their child.

Secondly, in its trenchant portrayal of the class differences that prevailed in the little newly-industrialized fishing village, the work tackles the issues of social justice and prejudice that would characterize its creators’ other most popular works, including South Pacific and The King and I.

Finally (and Carousel was composer Rodgers’s favorite creation), it integrates the music into the story with an almost operatic intensity. The songs flow out of the dramatic moment, and express the characters’ yearnings, as much with the powerful melodies as with Hammerstein’s perfect lyrics.

Now the show is being staged through the month of May at New Haven’s Long Wharf Theatre, a production put together by the same creative team that put together last year’s splendid revival of Man of La Mancha: Director Charles Newell, Music Director Doug Peck, and Scenic Designer John Culbert. The result is breathtaking.

For anyone who doesn’t know the story, spirited young factory girl Julie Jordan falls in love with the itinerant carnival barker Billy, though the relationship will cost them both their jobs. Frustrated at being unemployed and tied down by marriage, Billy falls in with the villainous Jigger Cragin, who persuades him to participate in a robbery. When he attempt fails, Billy kills himself rather than face a long prison sentence.

Outside the back door of Heaven he is given one chance to redeem himself by going down to earth for one day and doing a good deed. Somehow he must reach out to his wife and daughter and give them some kind of strength and courage that will make their lives endurable.           

Culbert’s design is sparse and abstract: a sweeping expanse of wooden planking that suggests wharves and decking, draped with coils of rope and fishnet. Hanging lanterns serve a variety of purposes, from individual fires at a clambake to stars in the firmament. Even the carousel of the title is represented only by human bodies, swinging and flinging their partners in a dizzying spin, while calliope music blares from the pit orchestra.

This production belongs to the performers, and they are spectacular, both in their voices and their acting. First off, Nicholas Belton brings to the role of Billy Bigelow a hard-edged toughness that makes him far more believable than John Raitt or Howard Keel or Gordon MacRae (who starred in the movie version) ever was.

With his Down East accent and explosive temper, it’s easy to see him as the kind of  hoodlum that parents want to protect their daughters from, but whom some daughters find irresistibly attractive.

Belton is well matched by Johanna Mckenzie Miller as Julie Jordan. Rather than the conventional golden-haired star, she uses her more ordinary looks to project quiet independence and intelligence.

“You’re a queer one, Julie Jordan,” her friend Carrie Pippenridge sings. “You are quieter and deeper than a well.” Where Billy is impulsive and muddle-headed — quick to anger and lash out, because he doesn’t understand his own feelings — Julie is able to read his heart, and casts her lot with him, although it will doom her to a life of poverty.

Traditionally, Carrie is played as a comic foil, marrying the redoubtable fisherman Mr Snow, and producing a horde of little Snows to match his success in increasing his “little boats.” Jessie Mueller brings more dimensionality to the role,  making Carrie a loyal and concerned friend, as well as having another beautiful voice.

And then there is Ernestine Jackson. Last year she blew audiences away in a one-woman performance as Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill. Here she has three small roles, most notably that of Julie’s kind-hearted cousin, as well as the “Keeper of the Stars” in Heaven, and the old town doctor who speaks at the high school graduation. When she sings what has become the show’s most famous anthem, “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” there isn’t a dry eye in the house.

Time passes very rapidly in Heaven, the Star Keeper explains, when Billy is astounded to learn that his daughter is already 15 years old. It passes quickly in the theater, as well. When the audience stood for a five minute ovation at the end, it was hard to believe that nearly three hours had gone by.

(Performances continue until June 1; call 203-787-4282 or visit LongWharf.org for tickets and curtain details. The theater’s website also has information for the special programming planned around the May 25, 27, 29 and 31 shows.)