Caroline or Change/ George C — Page 2

""Being Alive" offers an audience hope."

But I don't think Sondheim liked it. Wasn't that the cop-out ending that Prince insisted on?

It was primarily a charater study and opera for non legit voices. This simply does NOT spell financial success in our Mama Mia, Hairspray, Wicked obsessed world. I personally thought it was wonderful. It gets better on repeat hearings. But that's just the reality of the current theatrical situation.

Just my opinion, I may be wrong.

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BlueWizard, i always took the the title as Caroline's options... she either remains Caroline or she changes...

eslgr8, I'm perplexed.

Are you saying that the L.A. audience laughed at the line "Hell's so hot it makes flesh fry, and Hell's where Jews go when they die" during the "$20 Dollar Bill" number in the second act?

That line is Caroline's biggest statement, and that two line exchange between the Noah and Caroline encompasses the entire message of CAROLINE. I can't fathom an audience laughing at that moment, and I can't believe that Wolfe, Kushner and Tesori would stand for it. It's the most serious moment of the play, and it should not garner laughter from an audience. Not even nervous laughter. It should elicit shock, and horror.

I'm glad that CAROLINE is doing well in L.A., but I can't agree with your statement that L.A. audiences are intelligent, if they feel the need to laugh at a horrifying statement like that.

It is because everyone in LA who has enough money to afford to go to the theatre has a Mexican maid of their own, and they don't want to acknowledge that that person might be human?

In New York, no one laughed at that line. The entire audience collectively gasped. Which is the only appropriate reaction, if you ask me.

I didn't leave Caroline, or Change depressed. I left with my head spinning, wanting to walk back into the theater can get tickets for the next performance.

That said, the show is unconventionally structured. I'm bad at articulating these things, but I'll try anyway. The first act is almost all setup- of the enormous cast of characters, their situations and relationsips, and of what's happening in the world in general, especially the JFK assassination and burgeoning civil rights movement.

The creators were very, very smart in putting "Roosevelt Petruchius Coleslaw" at the end of Act I, because it's probably the show's sweetest and lightest number (even if I still don't fully comphrehend the symbols in it.) Otherwise you'd go into intermission thinking the show is very heavy and complex indeed, and not much else.

The payoff of Act I, of course, is in all the enormous emotional clashes of Act II, culminating in "Lot's Wife." It's in Act II, with "1943," that you start to fully comprehend what makes Caroline as bitter as she is, and it's in Act II that all the characters have their big moments, from Mr. Gellman's part in "Moon, Emmie and Stuart Trio" to Emmie's "I Hate the Bus."

Contrast this with, say, Oklahoma!, in which Ado Annie gets "I Cain't Say No," Jud gets "Lonely Room," and Curly and Laurie get "People Will Say We're in Love," all in Act I. Caroline's Act I makes you wait- it builds the situations slowly and methodically, hoarding all those emotions and making you spend them all at once in Act II. Even for someone who's open-minded, it's hard to wait for that long with only small amounts of release.

I have no idea if I'm saying this right- like I said, I'm pretty bad at articulating these things. But that's the impression I'm starting to get after staring at the track list of the OBC for 5 minutes or so.

Oh, and another strike "against" Caroline is the complete and utter lack of a love story. All the romance in the show is either in the past (Caroline's ex-husband and Stuart's wife) or distant, as with Dottie's boyfriend. We're used to shows with at least some kind of couple. None of that here. And like I said, even if you're open-minded it might be subconsciously off-putting.

ETA: No one laughed at the "Hell's where Jews go when they die" line when I went. But it might be nervous laughter; who knows. I found it a bit weird that we all laughed at Caroline's line about beating up her ex-husband.

Updated On: 12/15/04 at 06:37 PM

Wow. I must defer to the concensus, if you all say that that line got a laugh when you attended CAROLINE.

It seems really wrong to me. Of course, memory is ephemeral. Maybe other people did laugh at that line when I saw the show, and I was just to busy trying to get my jaw out of my lap to notice. It's certainly possible.

Plum, you were very articulate, and brought up a number of interesting ideas.

This is a great thread, and I'm totally enjoying what everyone has to say about CAROLINE. As someone else said, it's a hard nut to crack. It's such an emotional show, and it certainly deserves to be analyzed to the 9th degree.

Robbie, sorry for the spoiler. By the way, Edie Falco kills herself at the end of "Night' Mother." And Nina? Isn't a Seagull. She's an ACTRESS. Nora leaves her husband, Juliet swallows poison, Anna Karenenina throws herself under a train, Charity Hope Valentine lives "hopefully" ever after, and the Wicked Witch of the West melts.

Updated On: 12/15/04 at 08:28 PM

Plum, Edie Falco walks on the stage and informs the audience at the beginning of "'Night Mother" that she's going to kill herself. It's not really a "SPOILER". It's a piece of information that you're given at the beginning of the show. It's a show about why, not about what happens. If it was supposed to be a big secret, Marsha Norman wouldn't have entitled her play 'Night, Mother.

Sorry, I'm just over the the whole SPOILER label. Telling someone who wins "Survivor" before the ending is a legitimate "SPOILER". Knowing that Caroline tells Noah he's going to burn in hell doesn't spoil CAROLINE, OR CHANGE. It's a musical without a plot. It can't be "spoiled," to use the Internet vernacular.

Updated On: 12/15/04 at 08:50 PM

Of course Caroline has a plot. I wouldn't exactly call revealing that line a spoiler, though. And I think a thread discussing why Caroline might have failed in New York should be expected to have some spoilers.

Thank you for the further spoilers on 'Night, Mother, by the way. I appreciate it. I don't care if there's a note in the Playbill saying that suicide happens- I didn't know. And the title doesn't give it away at all. That is a spoiler.

it is so perplexing, their laughter. But that is what is so intresting about the experience of watching this show, yes? It is so visceral, it hits you in all the funny places.

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Of course the show has a plot. It is a very strong one too. It just isn't a plot driven show. The plot is very minor, and most of the events in it are emotional ones as opposed to literal.

It is a show about ideas that come from events; the emotions surrounding change.

It is just like the patterns of history, and one might say it is the whole plot of Caroline:

"History, change, reaction."

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I tend to prefer musicals that others deem "depressing"--or theatre in general (my fave plays by my fave playwright, Tennessee Williams, are Sweet Bird of Youth and Orpheus Descending). I agree with others here that such theatre doesn't really leave me depressed though--I feel enriched by it.

BTW Sondheim is quoted as calling Being Alive a cop out ending--I think in the Zadan book. He's said he only saw it work *once* really and that was in a late 80s revival by Susan Schulman (sp?) where he said the actor playing Bobby had such a clear "i got it" moment just thru how he acted right before and leading into the song.

as much as I love and respect Sondheim's opinion though--and LOVE Happily Ever After, I think Prince was right--it just wouldn't work as an ending for Company. (of course in some wasy Prince ended Zorba--his concept musical right before COmpany--in just that manner with Zorba's life not really changed--and I know it wasn't a big hit partly as people found it so depressing)

E

Updated On: 12/15/04 at 10:01 PM

MisterChoi, I understand what you're getting at. But "History, change, reaction" isn't a plot. They are themes. I think audiences are conditioned to expect plot, which CAROLINE has very little of.

EricMontreal, I believe you're right that Sondheim is quoted as considering "Being Alive" a cop out ending in the Zadan book. But he has apparently changed his mind since then, if one can believe Seacrest. I suspect he's come around to Hal's way of thinking over the years. If he really wanted "Happily Ever After" to close the show, he had ample opportunity to reinstate it in the recent COMPANY revivals, which didn't involve Mr. Prince.

Updated On: 12/15/04 at 10:17 PM