CARNIVAL: What do you think

[Noel&Cole]

Posted: 5/7/08 at 10:13pm

While shuffeling through my music I remember how much I love the show CARNIVAL. With music by Bob Merrill. Does anybody else love this musical? I think it is a true gem yet tends to be forgotten. It is a beautiful magical show that I think should be revived. Anybody have any thoughts? I hear the Encores production with Anne Hathaway was great and she lit up stage.

[sanda]

Posted: 5/7/08 at 10:55pm

I saw the Kennedy Center production last year. It's a mesmerizing experience. I love every second of it. I cannot ever imagine that I could have been so moved by such a simple love story.

[DottieD'Luscia]

Posted: 5/7/08 at 10:57pm

Sanda, you beat me to it. I saw the same production and really liked what I saw. I was not familiar with the show at all until them. Loved the score and performances by the cast.

[puppetman2]

Posted: 5/7/08 at 11:31pm

This one of my favorite shows. Have performed the puppets in it three times and directed it once. The music is wonderful, the story is so good. But I have to say that it is a difficult show to do because of the puppets - needs a great actor with the ability to manipulate the puppets and act the part. Then there is the magic - something else not easy to perform well. Jerry Orbach, yes from Law and Order, was perfection. The female lead is also a very demanding role, someone who has to convince an audience that the puppets are alive.

With all of this, I really love this show.

[Timmer]

Posted: 5/7/08 at 11:58pm

I alos saw the Kennedy Center production last year, and it was great. They ought to revive Carnival with those people in it. The only thing wrong with the production, IMO, was that they clipped "Love Makes the World Go Round" and they ought to restore it.

Otherwise, just bring the Kenned Center production to Broadway. A pity they didn't put it on DVD or something.

Carnival is on of my all-time favorite shows.

[JohnBoy2]

Posted: 5/8/08 at 12:44am

I saw the original Broadway production and I loved it. The cast was pretty phenomenal, and its opening is the single greatest opening to a show I have ever seen.

[rosscoe(au)]

Posted: 5/8/08 at 12:52am

Johnboy, how does the show open?

Did anyone see Anne Hathaway in the encores production and also how and why do puppets come into this?

[Elphie3]

Posted: 5/8/08 at 12:54am

Sadly I've never gotten to see it live I LOVE "Lili" - the movie based on "Carnival" and I love the songs. I wish they would do a nice production somewhere in NYC.

[being.jeremiah]

Posted: 5/8/08 at 2:22am

I know there's a big, unexpected producer who really wants to take that show to the Way.

[Gypsy9]

Posted: 5/8/08 at 8:55am

I saw CARNIVAL in 1961 at the Imperial. It starred Jerry Orbach, Anna Maria Alberghetti, James Mitchell, Kaye Ballard and the French Pierre Olaf. This brilliant production, with music and lyrics by Bob Merrill and book by Michael Stewart, was directed and choreographed by Gower Champion in what may be Champion's finest achievement on Broadway. It received 5 rave reviews and 2 favorable ones and ran for a very respectable 719 performances, about the same number that the OBC of GYPSY ran.

I loved this show, from the actors to the music to the choreography, to the whole concept. When you walked into the Imperial, the curtain was already up, and the stage lights barely lit on an empty stage. Ever so slowly the stage lights became brighter as the roustabouts started setting up their carnival in a new town. Only when the carnival was set up did the overture begin.Overtures used to be more important than they seem to be today.

Orbach, as the sour, bitter puppetier, lived a happier life through his hand puppets. Alberghetti was the young impressionable waif from "a little town called Mira". Her singing of a song called "Mira" was exquisite, where the ending of the song, on a note so pianissimo that you could hear a pin drop in the theatre, was breath-taking.

There were actual magic tricks performed in between very dramatic scenes involving Orbach and Alberghetti. The one "hit" of the show was "Love Makes the World Go 'Round", so I can't imagine a director cutting that song. The rousing "Grand Imperial Cirque de Paris" was a wonderfully choreographed number involving most of the cast.

I saw the OBC of CAMELOT that night, and I have to say that it paled in comparison with the magical CARNIVAL. Everyone knows where Jerry Orbach went after this show, but what became of Anna Maria Alberghetti and her marvelous singing voice? She must have gotten married and moved on to a non theatrical life.

I would love to see this musical revived, especially if the direction and choreography of the talented Gower Champion could be restored, as unlikely as that might be. But if Bonnie Walker can reproduce the original Jerome Robbins choreography for the current revival of GYPSY, it would be possible.

[philcrosby]

Posted: 5/8/08 at 8:57am

I also saw the Kennedy Center production, and it was as good as I think a production of this show could be (absent the original, of course).

[Brandy_Breath]

Posted: 5/8/08 at 9:30am

Carnival! has to be one of my favorite shows in the whole world.

I too saw the Kennedy Center production (6 times actually) and had a very interesting experience during the final weekend. This older woman next to me and brought her mother to see the show and her mother was telling me about seeing the original production and the movie when she was younger. After the show, she told me that she believed they were just as good as the original cast and how good it was to see the show she loved again. It about broke my heart.

[doodlenyc]

Posted: 5/8/08 at 9:54am

I saw the Encores! production and liked Hathaway alot...but found the show creepy creepy creepy! Lovely score, but icky story, imo.

[brooklynbecca]

Posted: 5/8/08 at 11:44am

This is my favorite show. I saw the Encores! production each night it was performed, and while I thought it was lovely, and that all the leads did great jobs (particularly Douglas Sills as Marco), I was shocked that they took out a major part of the show. Paul is supposed to slap Lilli near the end of the show, and they just skipped it altogether. I am certainly not a fan of violence towards women, but I was expecting the slap, and I felt that the show lost a little of its power without it. It's such a tiny moment, but I think it has a huge effect on all the characters, because you see how the two leads respond to this and it tells so much about both of them. Anyone else see this and notice it? Thoughts?

Also, I heard back in 2002 that producer Julian Shlossberg owned the rights to the show and was seriously considering a Broadway production, but I guess nothing ever came of that. Also might have been bunk.
Updated On: 5/8/08 at 11:44 AM

[Timmer]

Posted: 5/9/08 at 6:47pm

I alos got to see the original, and I have occasionally wondered what happened to Anna Maria Alberghetti. (Did you know, BTW, that one of her replacements was her sister Carla Alberghetti?)

This is a great show and I am thankful that the Kennedy Center revived it so that people an see again how magnificent it was.

[ohjustjake]

Posted: 5/9/08 at 7:13pm

I have not seen this show but I have owned the OCR for a while now, and I love everything about it. Her Face has become a permanent song in my repertoire. It'd be great to see this show come back to Broadway sometime.

[Jon]

Posted: 5/9/08 at 7:17pm

At some point, it's the story of a girl who's either very young (under 16), OR mentally challenged, who shows up at a carnival where she is immediately sexually assaulted by a dirty old man, and then two semi-dirty, semi-old men both try to sleep with her.

[MisterRussell]

Posted: 5/9/08 at 8:21pm

I have performed in CARNIVAL twice now; as Paul in 1979 and as Schlegel in 2004. Both times it was a mind-numbing bore. At least I got paid well the second time.

[puppetman2]

Posted: 5/9/08 at 9:33pm

Jon, you only see a very dark minute thing in the show. Lili is simply naive, NOT retarded. She has never seen anything outside of her small provincial town.

If you want to see something extremely dark, read the book by Paul Gallica that was written after the film LILI that CARNIVAL was based on - LOVE FOR SEVEN DOLLS.

Updated On: 5/10/08 at 09:33 PM

[Little-Lotte]

Posted: 5/9/08 at 9:56pm

I also saw the Kennedy Center production bunches of times. How I wish they would have transferred it to Broadway. That production was just beautifully done, it's a shame they didn't at least record it, since there are so few cast recordings of the show.

I so wish I could have seen the original production, that must have been an amazing experience.

[dwwst12]

Posted: 7/20/12 at 9:48pm

Having just seen the current production of Carnival at Gloucester Stage Company (Mass.), I dug up this old thread just for the heck of it.

I knew nothing about the show, and am always a bit wary of "hidden gems." But I found it to be surprisingly enjoyable, and more gritty and daring than I would've expected.

It was painfully slow to get off the ground, I thought. But the final scene of Act I when the puppets make their first real appearance was moving and absolutely hilarious, and the plot moved much more briskly from there.

I totally see where the "creepy" crowd is coming from, but I'm choosing to just suspend my disbelief and let that angle go!

[Dollypop]

Posted: 7/20/12 at 11:17pm

Today's audiences can find Paul to be a pedophile and Lili to be retarded. Of course, that was never the original intent. Perceptions change along with time.

As for Paul's slapping, Lili: A heated discussion developed between me and a fiend after seeing Goodspeed's current and remarkable staging of CAROUSEL. I saw Billy Bigelow's slapping Julie as an extension of his life that was devoid of any love--including self love. She saw it as an arrant glorification of spousal abuse. I wonder if she feels the same way about STREETCAR?

[After Eight]

Posted: 7/20/12 at 11:36pm

Count me among those who love it.

It's one of my favorite shows.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 7/20/12 at 11:42pm

I thought Douglas Sills was terrific at Encores. I wasn't that impressed with Anne Hathaway.

I don't think the show is worth reviving, except as a museum piece.

[Jon]

Posted: 7/21/12 at 5:07am

Lili is unable to comprehend the fsct that Paul is the voice behind the puppets. She believes they are real. What does she think Paul does for a living? Does she not understand the meaning of the word "puppeteer?"