BWW REVIEWS: Lyric Opera of Chicago's CAROUSEL Is Huge, Audaciously Daring, and Bracingly Human

When one of the world's major opera houses announced its plans to present the best-known works of Broadway's Rodgers and Hammerstein over a five-season span, no one had reason to believe that the Lyric Opera of Chicago would present a "Carousel" starring a slew of Broadway, television, opera and ballet stars alongside the cream of Chicago's theatrical and vocal talent (60 actors, singers and dancers in all), supported by an orchestra of 37 players, and all overseen by the same director and musical director who would bring "The Sound of Music" and "Peter Pan" to live television, Carrie Underwood, Christopher Walken and all.

And yet, the Tony Award-wining director-choreographer Rob Ashford and conductor David Chase have indeed brought together a starry assemblage of on- and off-stage talent in service of R&H's most problematic major show, one with well-known songs, a plot that veers into several new directions in act two, and that addresses issues of domestic violence and women's economic status that contemporary audiences can find troubling. There are ballet sequences, props galore, locations which each occur only one time, and leading roles that are at times inscrutably remote and always difficult to cast. And yet, in bold and creative ways, this "Carousel" (which runs through May 3rd) reaches literally for the stars and frequently attains them, bringing innovative ideas and the personnel to implement them to a production that is huge, audaciously daring, and bracingly human. And yes, one that is immediately legendary.

The 1945 "Carousel," darker and even more unusually written than its elder sister, "Oklahoma!," may be the most natural fit of these five shows into an opera house, both physically and artistically. (The other three are "South Pacific," "The King and I" and "The Sound of Music," of course.) And while the members of the Lyric Opera Chorus (along with others in the ensemble) make songs like "Blow High, Blow Low," the final "You'll Never Walk Alone" and, especially, "A Real Nice Clambake" sound better than they have probably ever sounded, Ashford and company don't rest on these pleasing but hardly surprising laurels. For one, the director enlisted Italian artist Paolo Ventura to make his theatrical debut with a series of stunning scenic designs for this production, including lovely blossoming trees, rustic houses that look both real and artificial, and a stunning concrete seawall that spans the width of the enormous stage of Lyric's Ardis Krainik Theatre (and provides some much-needed change of levels for a tall proscenium space). Tony award-winning costume and lighting designers Catherine Zuber and Neil Austin work with a variety of silhouettes and colors to highlight and deepen the visual attention.

But it is Ashford's casting decisions that led him to, or enabled him to flesh out, some bold directorial choices in this production. The Tony winner Jarrod Emick ("Damn Yankees") makes bad-boy Jigger Craigin another one of his characterizations that is both a dynamite singer and an imposing physical presence. Two-time Tony Award nominee Charlotte D'Amboise is a great actress as well as the finest theatrical dancer of her generation, and with her casting, Mrs. Mullin (the aging tart who owns the seaside carousel that embodies the show's wild, circular ride through life) becomes a real object of affection for her star barker, the infamous Billy Bigelow. (The show opens with the two emerging from a trailer after an unmistakable time of intimacy.) She even dallies meaningfully with his younger doppelganger, the Carnival Boy, in ways I don't think I have seen before.

That Carnival Boy, London ballet and stage star Martin Harvey, is broodingly sexy, and the Louise he dances with here, Abigail Simon, is remarkable in her line, extension and childlike wonder. Barrington High School alum Robby Kipferl is memorable as Enoch Snow, Jr., David Lively a commanding David Bascombe, and George Andrew Wolff a genial yet firm First Heavenly Friend.

As the Starkeeper and Dr. Seldon, journeyman actor Tony Roberts is wryly fine, though perhaps a tad too slow. The celebrated Carmen of two Lyric seasons this century, Denyce Graves, sings the solo version of "You'll Never Walk Alone" with amazing vocal control and heatfelt sincerity, though her large voice is much too much for the otherwise fine sound design of Mark Grey, with distortion evident in the miking.

The Carrie and Mr. Snow of the young Broadway stars Jenn Gambatese and Matthew Hydzik are pretty delightful, bringing humor and sex appeal to the proceedings and displaying idiomatic singing that walks that opera-Broadway line. She was Maria in Lyric's "The Sound of Music" a year ago, and he just finished a Broadway run in the short-lived revival of "Side Show." We are lucky to have them in this.

Which brings us to the much-hyped leading Broadway pair of the night, "Cinderella" star Laura Osnes and "The Bridges of Madison County" star Steven Pasquale, as millworker Julie Jordan and carny Billy Bigelow, whose unlikely romance provides the longest through-line of the evening. Two-time Tony nominee Osnes is fine in a role notoriously difficult to negotiate (why marry him, why stay faithful to him, etc.) and brings a lovely soprano voice to songs which, beyond the hit "If I Loved You," aren't that memorable. She looks right, and, if she doesn't bring the same complexity to the role that Steppenwolf's Sally Murphy brought to the 1994 Broadway revival (the "Cosmic 'Carousel'"), well, who else could?

And this leaves the Billy Bigelow of Steven Pasquale, a brooding leading man if there ever was one, and yet one who, at the age of 38, is perhaps too old (or at least too experienced-looking) to be the confused, lost, skill-free, restless, violent-prone anti-hero that most productions present in this role. His singing is different than expected, too, with thin, nasal, contemporary pop vowels that worked very well in his most recent Broadway outing, but seem out of place in an opera house rendering of a Golden Age, "Broadway Baritone" showcase. On the acting side of things, he is prone to anger and undoubtedly watchable, sexy but somehow cautious. Those things being said, there are two stunning, daring moments of "coup de theatre" in this production (relating to Billy's love for Julie) that may not have happened with another, lesser, actor in this role. And there's one unmistakable visual metaphor that in lesser hands would have seemed cheesy.

Pasquale's "Soliloquy," the famous act one "aria," was met with vociferous applause on opening night, and the audience clearly adored his performance throughout. I suspect that most close observers of this production will find that their overall impression of the piece will rise and fall based on their response to Pasquale's performance, one which is totally unique, well-rehearsed and creatively delivered. It may not be what the doctor ordered, but attention must be paid.

I have some other misgivings about the production, not the least of which is Ashford's decision to set the action of the play during the 1930s (not the late 1800s), and to tone down the show's New England setting. To me, there are too many local references in the dialogue, and too many time-specific situations (the value of money, whaling, millgirls living with a house matron, no telephones, etc.) for the show to work during the Depression. And Ventura's show curtain seems Victorian (if not outright steampunk), which confused me. Less troubling is the toning down of the Yankee dialect Hammerstein wrote into the script and songs. Ah, well. I also missed the presence of a bench during what every student of musical theater scene-song structure knows as "the bench scene," though rocks and a suitcase were available. I quibble, I suppose.

For so much is right here. For starters, the show is virtually complete, three hours of all the ballets, reprises and "recitative" sections one can remember (though the missing 12 bars of the "Soliloquy," that begin "When I have a daughter," are still missing). Scene changes occur in full view, as the current Broadway custom dictates, even though very little scenery comes up through the stage floor or moves in complicated, computerized fashion. That "bench scene" with Billy and Julie, and the later Carrie-Enoch scene that includes "When the Children Are Asleep," seem two sides of the same coin in a way that they somehow sometimes don't, to my great symmetrical delight. And the ballet in act two, the one that folks call "the beach ballet," doesn't really take place on the beach here, happening as it does within the same set where the Heavenly Friends and the Starkeeper do their work. Rather than the "story ballet" that Agnes de Mille provided for the original Broadway production, Ashford's version is more like a fever dream for Billy, who walks through its action and can't quite believe the horrors that appear before him. I was left with the wondrous hope that Louise's life wasn't quite as awful as Billy "sees" it to be. And what a creative way to conceive of the entire sequence! (Which, by the way, may never sound as amazing again as it does when this orchestra plays it.)

For those who listen to the broadcast of opening night, tape-delayed by one day and airing on Chicago's WFMT-FM (98.7) and WFMT.com on April 12 at 7:15 pm, Central Time, you will undoubtedly hear a well-played and mostly well-sung complete recording of one of the American musical theater's masterworks, problematic though it usually is. But you will be missing the grandeur of the massive sets, the spectacle of the dances, the beauty of the lights and the tears and the shimmering moon and the falling blossoms (just their time to, I reckon). You will miss the most realistically detailed staging of "A Real Nice Clambake" I have ever dreamed of (it's not awkward!). You will miss the moment of Billy's life or death decision, conceived in epic fashion. You will miss how Billy shows Julie his love. And you will miss the sheer power of a cast of five dozen insanely talented folks walking an expansive stage, telling a timeless tale while singing songs loved by generations of Americans.

For what this show and this epic production really do is illuminate the human condition. Among the dozens of mill girls and whaling boys are two souls longing to love, desperately aching to feel fully alive, no matter what fate has in store for them. Community matters, and the individual matters too. Couples matter, families matter, heritage and hope and faith and music matter. Memory matters. Life matters.

Come to the "Carousel." You need to get your ticket punched, to catch a ride on your very own life, and to do so in the most unforgettable way you can imagine. And you'll never walk alone.

Lyric Opera of Chicago's new production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Carousel" begins April 10, 2015, opens April 11 and continues through May 3 at the Civic Opera House, 20 N. Wacker Dr., Chicago. Tickets start at $29, and are available at www.lyricopera.org/carousel or at 312-827-5600.

PHOTO CREDIT: Todd Rosenberg

PHOTOS: Laura Osnes and Steven Pasquale; Matthew Hydzik, Jenn Gambatese and Jarrod Emick; Charlotte D'Amboise