Caroline or Change London Reviews

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 10/20/06 at 1:33am

Just in case anyone is interested, I thought I'd start a thread (it opened last night).


The Guardian is a Rave (5 Stars out of 5):

"The National Theatre used to bring us Broadway's golden oldies. Now it imports something original: a remarkable musical, with book and lyrics by Tony Kushner and music by Jeanine Tesori, which started at New York's Public Theater and subtly interweaves private emotions and public issues.

_______________________________________________________________


One of the musical's great virtues, however, is that its big ideas grow out of the small change of human experience. Caroline, a divorcee struggling to bring up a family on $30 a week, is a stern, God-fearing woman. But something as seemingly trivial as her reluctance to accept Noah's loose change grows into a momentous issue when she apparently pockets a $20 bill. Noah and Caroline exchange insults which leave scars and expose a profound class, economic and racial divide that demands change.

Kushner's non-linear book focuses on a relationship while giving us a kaleidoscopic portrait of a community. And Tesori's brilliant score eclectically employs different idioms to illustrate character and social dynamics. Caroline's basement washing machine, radio, and dryer embody the sounds of vintage soul and Tamla Motown. Above ground, Noah's father plays classical clarinet and a Chanukah family party erupts into a joyous klezmer dance. This is, you could say, the ultimate upstairs-downstairs musical.

George C Wolfe's Lyttelton production, designed with floating elegance by Riccardo Hernandez, matches the poetic freedom of the narrative. Repeating her New York performance, Tonya Pinkins is also magnificent as Caroline: unsentimental, indestructible, large-voiced, and yet capable of demonstrating the pain of personal change. Perry Millward, one of three boys who plays Noah, catches exactly the character's complex, love-hate feelings for the maid. There is excellent support from Anna Francolini as his fiercely resented stepmother, and from Pippa Bennett-Warner as Caroline's elder daughter for whom a brighter future beckons. But the real joy lies in finding a musical that combines compassion with social awareness.


http://arts.guardian.co.uk/reviews/story/0,,1927048,00.html

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 10/20/06 at 1:41am

The London Times is Positive (4 out of 5 stars):

"Here’s the title’s second significance. Rose tells Caroline she can keep any loose change she finds. Knowing that the maid is divorced and her family desperately poor, Noah then deliberately leaves cents and quarters in his pockets. Grimly, Caroline pockets the small change but refuses the notes, only to take the $20 bill Noah didn’t wish to lose. Trivial stuff? Yes, but Kushner builds the incident into an example of the tense, difficult relationship of well-meaning, but limited, whites and suspicious blacks in an America in a social flux that continues today.

Politically germane arguments break out in both Thibodeaux and Gellman households and reach an ironic climax when Caroline’s daughter, a political activist who rejects her mother’s quietism yet believes in non-violence, quarrels with Rose’s father, a New York Marxist who wants blacks to “blow the bastards to kingdom come”. At least I think that’s what he declares, because virtually every word is sung and at times the lyrics blur a bit.

Then again, I wondered how impressive the evening would be if Wolfe’s cast spoke lines that don’t exactly soar. But that’s a test almost every opera or sung-through musical would fail. As it is, Tesori’s score, which embraces Afro-American and Jewish music, rock and blues and gospel, does help to give the evening the size and significance it’s in danger of lacking. That’s nowhere more the case than at the denouement when Pinkins renounces the hate she thinks has made her evil, accepts people different from herself, and commits herself to a gritty survival.

Conservative stuff? Not as the brilliant Pinkins belts it out. She’s uneducated, she’s been wronged — and she’s by far the bravest spirit on stage."


http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,14936-2413861,00.html

[Paulyd]

Posted: 10/20/06 at 2:48am

i'm lgad the critics loved it. i saw it last week and it blew me away. i just hope it transfers to the west end when it finishes its run at the National.

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 10/20/06 at 2:56am

I'm so glad. I hope Pinkins gets the Olivier.

[mallardo]

Posted: 10/20/06 at 3:45am

I saw it a couple of nights ago. It's an exact re-creation of the New York production and the English cast members do themselves proud. Tonya was extraordinary, of course, and in excellent voice. The audience - a full house for a preview - adored it.

[joshy]

Posted: 10/20/06 at 12:58pm

The Daily Telegraph doesn't give stars, but it's another rave!:

"A week that began with the sublime silliness of Spamalot now ends with the surging emotion and astonishing originality of Caroline, or Change.

Spamalot will undoubtedly prove the bigger box office hit but, when the awards for best musical are announced, it will be a disgrace if this amazing piece of music-theatre doesn't seize the glittering prizes.

Such subject matter might sound like an earnest civics lesson but Kushner's great achievement is to make the political personal in a work that combines great dramatic intensity with wild flights of fantasy and music of thrilling variety and strength.

Somehow the daring mixture of whimsy, passion and radical politics succeeds triumphantly, and Tesori's score ranges vibrantly between classic soul, Supremes-style pop, Jewish klezmer, Sondheim parody and Mozartian classicism. But it is much more than pastiche. The best numbers raise the hairs on the back of the neck.

Tonya Pinkins is simply sensational in the title role, capturing all the pain and courage of a woman who has been dealt a lousy hand in life largely because of the colour of her skin, and she rips into her big numbers with the artistry of Aretha Franklin and the raw power of Janis Joplin.

In a busy year for musicals, Caroline, or Change is the dark horse that romps home to victory."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/arts/2006/10/20/btspencer21.xml

[ShuQ]

Posted: 10/20/06 at 1:02pm

I'm thrilled to hear that it's being receiving so well...they deserve this. Now when are we gonna get some video clips?

[algy]

Posted: 10/20/06 at 1:03pm

There's a really nice picture of the Moon with the Guardian review too.

I have to see this at Christmas.

[RentBoy86]

Posted: 10/20/06 at 1:08pm

My friend is going to see this in London and I'm so jealous. I'm glad it's doing well and I hope it transfers as well.

[DG]

Posted: 10/20/06 at 1:09pm

"when the awards for best musical are announced, it will be a disgrace if this amazing piece of music-theatre doesn't seize the glittering prizes."

I'm in touch with that - maybe past indignities can be over-written with the Oliviers.

[kombatkoala]

Posted: 10/20/06 at 1:51pm

Good to hear that they liked it. I got a tour or the National today and saw Tonya Pinkins getting some flowers fromt the desk. I just need to get tickets to see it!!

[ruthiefan_felix]

Posted: 10/20/06 at 1:53pm

So it's worth seeing right? Anyone who's seen it... is the theatre big? Cuz I wanna get some student rush tkts or the cheapest tkts on the back of the theatre.

[uncageg]

Posted: 10/20/06 at 2:13pm

The show deserves good reviews. I am so upset that I only got to see it once on Broadway. By the time I got back to New York it had closed. I know there has been talk that HBO filmed it. I really hope that they release it or at least show it sometime in the future. I really want to see this show again. It is tied with Sweeney as my all time favorite.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 10/20/06 at 2:24pm

Maybe the National will record it for DVD as they did Oklahoma. That would be something to look forward to.

[DG]

Posted: 10/20/06 at 2:28pm

Matt - from your keyboard to the theatre god's eyes!

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 10/20/06 at 2:50pm

Whatsonstage.com also gives it 5 Stars:

"It's significant, therefore, that the musical piece that is the most original, beguiling, ambitious and surprising might well turn out to be Caroline, or Change at the National Theatre, a new production by George C Wolfe of the musical by Tony Kushner (book and lyrics) and Jeanine Tesori (music) that he first directed at the Public Theater in New York three years ago. The show moved on to Broadway, but closed after only 38 performances, despite several laudatory notices among a general critical disappointment. "
______________________________________________________________

The generosity of the musical is reflected not only in the score – an astonishing amalgamation of American styles including blues, Motown, spirituals and klezmer – but also in the scope of the social canvas, which stretches in the second act to include a Chanukah dinner.

Even there, though, the show does not give up: Caroline’s daughter Emmie (stunningly well played by Pippa Bennett-Warner) is a cipher of hope and high spirits. The inanimate world of Caroline’s kitchen comes throbbingly alive, too, in the singing washing machine, the radio (a Supremes-style trio in gold lame sheath dresses and beehive hair-do’s) and Clive Rowe’s hilarious dryer, an exploding Little Richard. Rowe also sings the pivotal lament for the death of JFK, as a night bus.

Overseen by the ever-changing Moon herself (a gloriously turbanned, bluesy soul mother, Angela M Caesar), Caroline comes to a series of self-examinations culminating in a huge number that has been rightly compared to “Rose’s Turn” in Gypsy. Tonya Pinkins delivers this, as she delivers the rest of the show, with consummate artistry and a welling passion that tears the audience apart. This is a majestic performance, one of the greatest I have ever seen in the musical theatre.

Perry Millward is pretty amazing, too, as young Noah, one of three boys sharing the role, and the hand-picked cast also includes Anna Francolini as the new stepmother, and a superbly entertaining trio of grandparents: Ian Lavender (that “stupid boy” from Dad’s Army!), Valda Aviks, cosy as an apple strudel, and Hilton McRae. Magical design by Riccardo Hernandez, bathed in the crepuscular lighting of Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer, reinforces an unforgettable evening. "


http://www.whatsonstage.com/dl/page.php?page=greenroom&story=E8821161333911

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 10/20/06 at 2:52pm

I find it funny that British critics embrace the show and call it brilliant, yet American critics didn't seem to get it.

What a shame, but I'm so glad it's finally getting it's due.

[joshy]

Posted: 10/20/06 at 3:13pm

Theatre.com is a bit more mixed, but is still ultimately postive:

"Even at the press night interval, people were quick to debate precisely the same issues that swirled around the show in New York, where some were deeply moved by it, others dismissive, and one or two on the fence. Count me more than ever in the "deeply moved" camp, even if George C. Wolfe's National Theatre production needs to sharpen in focus.

Caroline, or Change isn't Spamalot (thank heavens, I say), which is why there will always be those who reject it outright. But it's no doubt in acknowledgment of some pretty weighty terrain that Wolfe, Kushner, and the amazing Jeanine Tesori, composer of the wildly rich and eclectic score, bring to magical realist life the environment around Caroline, starting with Rowe's commanding double duty as both a bus and also a dryer.

The National is the perfect address for a show posing self-evident commercial risks that makes absolute sense in a subsidised theatre repertoire devoted in varying ways to new music-theatre, the category to which Tesori's luxuriant score (you name a musical style, and it's here somewhere) firmly belongs.

The result is a lot for any one show to have to juggle, though anyone familiar with Kushner's output will be aware that this is one prodigious talent unlikely to settle for less when there's more to be said. And in a way that wasn't so apparent in New York, the London staging sometimes loses its clarity, Riccardo Hernandez's shifting scenery often given over to so many competing goings-on that you misplace the essential thread, the necessary build-up, needed to give that late encounter between Caroline and Noah its grievous impact.

As for Pinkins, too much can't be written about a performer who does both the easy and the hard things well. Kushner and co. may, it's true, not have given us the most glamorous leading character in a musical season already marked out by Lucy T. Slut, Sally Bowles, Elphaba and the Lady of the Lake. But he's given us the one we recognise from life, here embodied anew in the performance for which Pinkins has clearly been waiting her entire life."

http://www.theatre.com/story/id/3004419

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 10/20/06 at 3:50pm

Munk --

It wasn't even all the American critics -- just the inept New York ones. The show received raves in LA, San Francsico and DC. But other than John Heilpern in the Observer, Elysa Gardener in USA Today, Adam Feldman in Time Out NY and Frank Rich in his Times Sunday column, most of the NY critics didn't seem to "get" the show. Yet another reason why I've said repeatedly over the years, NYC needs a new slate of critics who are competent and capable of understanding new, unusual and demanding works of theatre. Apparently, most other major cities in the English-speaking world have qualified and perceptive reviewers, so it's a shame that the theatre capital of North America doesn't.

[VIETgrlTerifa]

Posted: 10/26/06 at 1:43am

I've always wondered why New York didn't seem to welcome Caroline as well as other cities seemed to have. I still haven't really found the answer.

Updated On: 10/26/06 at 01:43 AM

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 10/26/06 at 1:46am

Ummmm.... the NY critics are idiots?

Updated On: 10/26/06 at 01:46 AM