Direct from a smash-hit run on London's West End, this new production of Tony Kushner (Angels in America) and Jeanine Tesori's (Fun Home) explosive musical launches to "the titanic dimensions of greatness" (Ben Brantley, The New York Times). The "incandescent" (Holly Williams, Time Out London) Sharon D Clarke stars in an exhilarating, Olivier Award-winning performance as Caroline, an African-American maid whose world of 1963 Louisiana ripples with change both large and small. Erupting with transcendent songs and larger-than-life imagination, Caroline, or Change explores how, in times of great transformation, even the simplest acts shake the earth.
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Now Clarke, who won an Olivier award for her performance in the British production, adds hers. She makes of the maid an almost Shakespearean figure; even at the depths of the character's despair, in the scarifying 11 o'clock number 'Lot's Wife,' she commands attention without begging for it, and does not allow herself, because Caroline wouldn't, the luxury of collapse. The result of that restraint is more painful than cathartic, leaving the story's emotional release to those who can afford it: Caroline's children. The chance to believe in change is her hard-won bequest to them - and, in this devastating, uncomfortable, crucial musical, to us.
As the title character of 'Caroline, or Change,' Sharon D. Clarke sings a breathtaking 11 o'clock number called 'Lot's Wife' that sparks thunderous applause; the audience at Studio 54 is clearly thrilled by the performer's soulful delivery. Some surely also burst into tears, saddened by the character's despair. But my enthusiasm for this first Broadway revival of Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori's inventive, thoughtful and affecting collaboration comes not just from those aspects of the show that satisfy audience expectations about big Broadway musicals. What makes this work so powerful, and especially timely, is how this splendid cast tells a small story about change - literal pocket change - while offering a larger glimpse into the complex undercurrents in a tense moment of change in American history.
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