‘CAROLINE, OR CHANGE’: Sharon D. Clarke (center) & cast. Photo: Joan Marcus.

CAROLINE, OR CHANGE
Book & lyrics by Tony Kushner
Music by Jeanine Tesori
Directed by Michael Longhurst
Through January 9, 2022
Studio 54

254 West 54th Street
(212-719-1300), www.RoundaboutTheatre.org


By David NouNou

Topical, controversial and ambitious would be three words to describe Caroline, or Change. It’s a show with a mystique for its devoted fans and a cult following, but it has also had a bumpy road from the onset. The original opened in 2004 at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre with Tonya Pinkins as Caroline and Anika Noni Rose in her Tony-winning role as Emmie, her daughter, and lasted for only 136 performances.

Set in Louisiana in 1963, we first see Caroline, the African-American maid (Sharon D. Clarke), in the basement doing the laundry for the Gellmans, a white Jewish family. She has been working at this job for most of her adult life. She has been dealt a tough hand. In addition to physical abuse, her husband abandoned her and left her with four children to raise. Caroline is a very bitter woman. She can talk and communicate better with inanimate objects than human beings. The objects that have a human form are: a washing machine (Arica Jackson), a dryer (Kevin S. McAllister), and her radio (Nasia Thomas, Nya and Harper Miles).

The one person who does pierce her armor is an eight-year-old boy, Noah Gellman (Adam Makké). Despite her personal feelings, she likes him and tries to protect and guide him. Noah leaves his loose change in his pockets and Caroline finds them and puts them in a laundry cup to return to him. In order to teach Noah the value of money, his stepmother Rose (Cassie Levy) tells Caroline to keep that change and supplement her income with it. This prompts a dilemma for Caroline on whether to keep the money to help her by giving some pocket money to her children or to leave it in the laundry cup.

The topicality of this musical is very pertinent today what with all the racial issues and Judaism, both of which are under attack; putting them together becomes an explosive issue. The message of the story being coexistence, both in 1963 and today.

The show was set to open in 2020, but the pandemic forced it to shut down. In the midst of a pandemic, the nation went reeling with the death of George Floyd and the aftermath of racism sent shockwaves around the world. This makes the message of coexistence in Caroline, or Change that much more pertinent.

The problem of the show isn’t in the message as much as it is in the messaging. The score is unmemorable and the book is so overwrought. Being Jewish myself, I always found the Jewish aspects of the book by Tony Kushner to be cliché to the point of ad nauseam, the language and the Yiddish idioms spoken by the Gellmans at times sound like a TV episode of “The Nanny” with Nanny Fine’s family.

There is a silver lining here: Sharon D. Clarke as Caroline. She originated the role in London in 2018 and she’s sensational. The songs may be unmemorable but the voices in this show are phenomenal.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published November 3, 2021
Reviewed at November 2, 2021 press performance.

‘CAROLINE, OR CHANGE’: The cast. Photo: Joan Marcus.

‘CAROLINE, OR CHANGE’: Caissie Levy & Sharon D. Clarke. Photo: Joan Marcus.

‘CAROLINE, OR CHANGE’: (Left to right): Nasia Thomas, Harper Miles, Nya, Arica Jackson, Sharon D. Clarke. Photo: Joan Marcus.

‘CAROLINE, OR CHANGE’: Adam Makké & Sharon D. Clarke. Photo: Joan Marcus.

‘CAROLINE, OR CHANGE’: Sharon D. Clarke. Photo: Joan Marcus.

‘CAROLINE, OR CHANGE’: Tamika Lawrence & Sharon D. Clarke. Photo: Joan Marcus.

‘CAROLINE, OR CHANGE’: Nya, Harper Miles & Nasia Thomas. Photo: Joan Marcus.

‘CAROLINE, OR CHANGE’: Nasia Thomas, Kevin S. McAllister & Sharon D. Clarke. Photo: Joan Marcus.

‘CAROLINE, OR CHANGE’: Nasia Thomas, Kevin S. McAllister, Sharon D. Clarke, Arica Jackson & Harper Miles. Photo: Joan Marcus.

The post ‘Caroline, or Change’: A timely revival appeared first on StageZine.

‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-PERESTROIKA’: Nathan Lane, giving the performance of his career. Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

ANGELS IN AMERICA: PART 1, MILLENNIUM APPROACHES & PART 2, PERESTROIKA
A GAY FANTASIA ON NATIONAL THEMES
By Tony Kushner
Directed by Marianne Elliott
Neil Simon Theatre
250 West 52nd Street
877-598-0955, https://angelsbroadway.com/

By Scott Harrah

There are two main reasons to see this revival of Tony Kushner’s classic two-part AIDS epic, Angels in America, Millennium Approaches and Perestroika. The first part is a masterpiece and one of the most provocative American plays of all time. Finally, the cast is superb and many of the performances are among the best in the past decade.

Both plays can be either seen in two parts on two separate evenings or on “marathon” days, when both Part 1, Millennium Approaches and Part 2, Perestroika are shown consecutively in repertory in the matinee and evening performances, at a total running time of nearly eight hours, with two intermissions in each part. If you decide to see only one part, Millennium Approaches is the better of the two because it is a seamless depiction of the early days of the AIDS pandemic. Mr. Kushner’s intricately constructed play is a heartbreaking visit back to that dark period for gay men in 1980s America, particularly poignant for those of us who lived through it, and of rich and important historical value for younger audience members who have never known someone who died of AIDS.

Millennium Approaches revolves around the stories of gay couple Louis Ironson (James McArdle) and his lover Prior Walter (Andrew Garfield), who is dying of AIDS; and “straight” couple Joe Pitt (Lee Pace), a Mormon lawyer, and his wife Harper (Denise Gough), a pill-popping housewife. Prior tells Louis he has AIDS, but Louis isn’t able to deal with having a sick lover. Roy Cohn (Nathan Lane), a right-wing lawyer, offers Joe a job in the Justice Department in Washington. However, Joe’s wife Harper, suffering from anxiety and hallucinations and a growing dependence on Valium, does not want to move to Washington.

Joe finds Louis crying in the men’s room one day and this is where the two couples’ lives start to intertwine. The two men begin a friendship, partially because Louis suspects Joe might be gay. In a dream sequence, Harper and Prior meet and she reveals that her husband is a closeted homosexual. She later confronts Joe but he denies being gay.

Meanwhile, Roy receives shocking news from his doctor. The doctor diagnoses Roy as having AIDS. Roy considers gay men weak and refuses to accept that he has AIDS, a “gay” disease. Roy says he will tell people he has “liver cancer,” but his doctor insists his efforts would be better spent acquiring an experimental AIDS drug.

The plot is complicated and has the feel of a classic Greek tragedy, with all of Harper’s hallucinogenic scenes and Roy being visited by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg (Susan Brown), the American woman he helped put to death based on allegations of Communism and “treason” back in the 1950s.

While Louis shuns his lover and seeks anonymous late-night sex in Central Park, Prior finds some comfort and compassion from his nurse, Belize (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett). Sexual tension grows between Louis and Joe, and Joe eventually makes a surprising revelation to his mother Hannah (Ms. Brown in a dual role) back in Salt Lake City.

Part One ends with a cliffhanger, which anyone familiar with the story already knows (so discussing it is not exactly a spoiler). Prior, growing increasingly ill, has a prophetic vision when an Angel (Amanda Lawrence) crashes through the roof of his apartment and ominously says, “The Great Work begins.”

Part One is a carefully constructed work. However, Part 2, Perestroika, is a much weaker and disappointing show. Harper is hallucinating wildly, imagining she is in Antarctica, but she’s really in Prospect Park, Brooklyn and gets picked up by cops. Joe is not around, but his mother Hannah arrives in New York and takes Harper in, offering her a chance to visit her at the Mormon Visitor’s Center. Hannah is volunteering there.

Roy Cohn grows sicker and is admitted to the hospital where Belize works. Roy starts off making horribly racist comments to the nurse, yet Belize, ever the professional, takes the proverbial high road and offers the dying lawyer advice on his treatment. Later, Prior tells Belize about the Angel.

It is at this point that making sense of Perestroika gets challenging, as the narrative becomes more convoluted. The Angel gives Prior a prophetic book and explains that God abandoned the Angels in Heaven after the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, and they believe they are powered by human sexual activity. Prior is now horrified by the Angel and tries to avoid her.

What makes the story so compelling, in addition to the dark subject matter about how AIDS affected so many, is the skillful way playwright Tony Kushner makes the lives of the characters intersect.

Director Marianne Elliott certainly puts a new spin on Angels in America, but her directorial choices may not please purists familiar with the original production. However, two actors give performances that are first-rate in every sense and help make this a “must-see” revival regardless.

British actress Susan Brown is simply incandescent in her multiple roles, whether she’s playing a rabbi, Hannah the Mormon mother or the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg. Her hospital scene after Roy Cohn’s death, in which Ethel’s ghost recites the mourner’s Kaddish in Hebrew, is truly haunting and eerily touching. Her interpretation of Hannah, the woman torn between her Mormon faith and compassion for her son and Prior grappling with his illness and the Angel, is consistently outstanding and rings with truth.

Andrew Garfield as Prior gives a fine performance, as does Nathan Stewart-Jarrett as the nurse Belize (although he is perhaps a bit too camp in places), and Lee Pace as Joe is superb, but Nathan Lane as Roy Cohn overshadows everyone. New York theatergoers have seen Mr. Lane many times before, but never like this. He is absolutely riveting every moment he is onstage, displaying all the hatred and rage and self-loathing of the Roy Cohn character. Toward the end of Roy’s life, as he is dying in a hospital bed, convulsing as he goes in and out of seizures, Mr. Lane’s interpretation is nothing less than awe-inspiring. This is, without question, the virtuoso stage performance of Nathan Lane’s career.

The original production featured the Angel with realistic-looking traditional wings, but in this revival the Angel, as conceived by puppet designers Finn Cardwell and Nick Barnes, looks more like Rodan, with the wingspan of a 747, about to destroy Tokyo in one of those old Godzilla movies. In addition, six actors alternate playing “Angel Shadows” to hold up the “wings.” The result is silly and distracting and adds nothing to the show. Puppetry may have worked for director Marianne Elliott in War Horse, with its gorgeous horse creations, but this new angle on angel wings just reeks of hubris and pretension here. As the adage goes “less is more,” and that is certainly the case here in an epic saga that is already so complicated, but there is no doubt this revival is a memorable one and should attract new generations of Tony Kushner fans, and will be talked about for many years.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published March 25, 2018
Reviewed at March 17, 2018 preview performance.

‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-PERESTROIKA’: Beth Malone & the ‘Angel Shadows’ (in dark costumes). Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-MILLENNIUM APPROACHES’: Andrew Garfield & Nathan Stewart-Jarrett. Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-MILLENNIUM APPROACHES’: James McArdle & Nathan Stewart-Jarrett. Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-MILLENNIUM APPROACHES’. Lee Pace. Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-PERESTROIKA’: Susan Brown as Ethel Rosenberg. Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-PERESTROIKA’: James McArdle & Lee Pace. Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-MILLENNIUM APPROACHES’: Nathan Lane & Susan Brown. Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-PERESTROIKA’: Nathan Lane & Nathan Stewart-Jarrett. Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-MILLENNIUM APPROACHES’: Nathan Stewart-Jarrett & Denise Gough. Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-MILLENNIUM APPROACHES’: Susan Brown. Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-PERESTROIKA’: (Front) Andrew Garfield & (back) James McArdle, Susan Brown & Nathan Stewart-Jarrett. Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

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