"Carousel," by Rogers and Hammerstein, has among its songs one called "A Real Nice Clambake" and another called "What's the Use of Wond'rin?" The first is about what a nice clambake the characters have just had, how many dozens of clams they've just eaten, and how full and jovial they are. The other asks what's the use of wondering if your man is good or bad when he's bound to hurt you in either case and you're bound to stay with him even then. The first is a frivolous and silly song and the second a dark and painful song. This production could have chosen the path of either song for its tone but chose to go with the clambake.
About a dozen years or so ago, Gary Griffin began to direct musicals on a small scale at Pegasus Theater. By necessity, they didn't have large orchestras or fancy sets. As a director, Griffin focused on wringing the meaning out of the songs and coached his singers into fine emotional performances. I guess Chicago Shakespeare Theatre and the Court Theatre caught wind of this and invited Griffin to direct musicals at both theaters. About six years ago, Griffin directed "My Fair Lady" at the Court, a musical I'd had no interest in at first. Griffin produced it with two pianos as the only instruments and great direction. The extremely talented Kate Fry played the lead with deep emotional intelligence and the show was a sensation. Ever since, the Court has been "exploring the American musical."
If one is going to conduct such an exploration, then doing Rogers and Hammerstein seems essential. As one sits through this production and wonders why the hell they did this show, one might remember that Rogers and Hammerstein were important pioneers of the American musical and instead ask yourself why the hell did they decided to do this show this way. The story, about a couple who loved each other but would never say "I love you," seems stunted and flat and much of the action seem to make no sense.
This show tries to have more integrity than a typical splashy musical but in the end doesn't. The young actors are all very fine singers but none of them are good actors -- of the caliber of Kate Fry. They act and move like actors in splashy musicals act and move. Whereas Griffin seemed to carefully consider each and every decision about what happened on stage, mining the script for meaning, this production seemed to take all of its cues from one's memories of musicals. There's a scene in which a wife finds her husband of just a few months dead -- he's killed himself rather than land himself in jail. In that moment, she says "I love you" to him for the first time. This scene could have been nicely done, especially since this thread of not saying "I love you" but wanting desperately to hear it is sewn throughout the play. Instead of dealing with the meaning of that scene, the director stages it so that all the actors turn their heads away from the mourning wife -- gestures that are hackneyed. Had "What's the Use of Wond'rin?" been treated intelligently, we would have felt the bitterness of the divorced woman who opens the number. One gets the sense, however, that the director never studied the scene with his actors.
The Court Theatre is one of the most consistently good theaters in town. Charlie Newell, the artistic director, always puts together an intelligent and unexpected season. I can see why he would choose this show but I'm sorry about this production.
As an aside, I will mention the race blind casting. This is something that the Court has done for some time. The theater has also consistently chosen plays that call for a majority of black actors. A few years ago it did a mixed cast production of "Desire Under the Elms" that was fantastic and made the story even more complicated. The mixed cast in this show is more straightforward. A number of actors of color, and not just black, have work on this production and that is a good thing. One choice seems unfortunate to me, though, and that is of Nettie, the matriarch among the young women. She is a surrogate mother to what appear to be motherless young women. Played by an African American woman, Nettie seems like a mammey character in this production, the selfless black woman who historically has cared for the white children of her owners/employers. In American history, mammies mothered the children of white women, even breast feeding them, until they grew into adolescence and were then torn away from the children. The southerner Lillian Smith has written about what a painful separation this is for the black woman and for the child. In popular culture, the mammey is usually depicted as jovial and selfless when the truth of the matter was that she had no choice. On the one hand, the fact that a talented African American has a well-paying role at one of Chicago's best theaters is great. On the other hand, they might have tried to play her differently to avoid this stereotype.
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