Robert Tanitch reviews Carousel at London Coliseum
ENO is short of cash and needs more audiences. One way to raise its profile is to semi-stage famous musicals with big names.
Lonny Price has already staged Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard at the London Coliseum.
Katherine Jenkins and Alfie Boe in Carousel
Price now revives Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s Carousel with Alfie Boe as rough boy Billy Bigelow and Katherine Jenkins as sweet Julie Jordan.
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There are some people who think it inappropriate for musicals to be staged by ENO but classic musicals have as much right to be on the Coliseum stage as classic operas.
In the 1940’s and 1950’s the Coliseum was home to American musicals such as Kiss Me Kate, Call Me Madam, Guys and Dolls and The Pajama Game.
The advantage of Carousel playing at the Coliseum now is that it gets ENO’s 42-piece orchestra and ENO’s chorus. The sound is great. David Charles Abell conducts
ENO’s hope is that audiences coming to the Coliseum to see Carousel will think of trying some opera next time.
Carousel is based on Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnar’s Liliom, which premiered in Budapest in 1909. Puccini wanted to turn it into an opera. Kurt Weill wanted to turn it into a musical.
Molnar rejected all offers, fearing the play would never be performed again. However, when Rodgers and Hammerstein invited him to see their musical, Oklahoma!, he was won over and to their surprise didn’t even object when they gave his story a happy ending.
Carousel was a big success in 1945 and Liliom hasn’t been seen since. The same thing happened to Bernard Shaw after Lerner and Loewe turned Pygmalion into My Fair Lady.
The story is set in New England at the turn of the 20th century. A nice, modest mill girl (tender, self-effacing Katherine Jenkins) falls in love with a fairground barker (Alfie Boe), a womanizer and petty criminal, who beats her and gets involved in a botched robbery and commits suicide.
The popular songs – “If I Loved You”, “June is Busting Out All Over”, “Mister Snow”, “A Real Nice Clambake”, “What’s the Use of Wond’rin’” and “You’ll Never Walk Alone” – carry the story forward and the lyrics have the authenticity of speech.
“My Son Bill, a seven-and-a-half minute soliloquy, is excellently delivered by the rousing Alfie Boe. Alex Young and Gavin Spokes have a lot of fun with Mr and Mrs Snow.
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