bwayphreak234 said: "My problems with this production can all be attributed to Jack O'Brien's shockingly awful directorial decisions."
Yup. I find most people have immense reverence for the show itself, despite its prickly themes. It is R&H’s most beautiful score. This production was simply poor from an artistic standpoint, let alone thematic.
It's a dark, conflicted show about a dark, conflicted subject and requires sure handling by a director with a clear intent. Since it doesn't offer easy answers, and actually provokes questioning about our concepts of love and what we require from our partners (and life), it can be easy to get hung up on the surface issues and miss the intricacies, which, I think, is why so many people still fondly remember the Hytner revival, which grappled directly with the darker themes (just look at how spooky the art was, my god!) and emphasized its mythical, epic qualities. When Billy sings his reprise of If I Loved You, it should be like there's a blue whale swimming beneath the floor of the theater, something huge moving in the depths - it's not (merely) a wife-beater being granted forgiveness, it's a mortal consciousness truly understanding, for the first time, the impact of its own selfishness and failure to empathize, and what it missed.
Audiences respond in the here and now. They are not actors who do research and put on attitudes from the past. They are not scholars studying a work for historical insight. That is always the problem in reviving classics--you have to figure out how to translate the message in a bottle sent from a long way away.
That said, even in the time it was written, Carousel had issues that had to be finessed. If you read the great new biography of R&H, Something Wonderful, you see the large amount of rewrites and the huge amount of material generated to prevent Billy from being just a brute and Julie from being just a doormat. So the problems directors and audiences have with the material are not so different now than in the 1940s.
I think whoever decided to cut songs and dialogue (Director or Producer) and instead let dance numbers go on past their usual length made a terrible mistake. But most audience members don't know this so the fact that they are not selling tkts on the classic title alone means the show is not connecting to ticket buyers and "word of mouth" must be poor. It's not always easy to blame a "controversial" topic when the show is sinking.
As stated, “Carousel” has always been problematic. I do blame direction and deleting so much book in Act Two. The 94 revival still burns brightly in my mind. That even didn’t run a long time.
joined:7/4/10
joined:
7/4/10
Posted: 8/10/18 at 9:18am