Caroline, or Change – Hampstead Theatre

T’shan Williams, Ako Mitchell, Sharon Rose and Sharon D. Clarke in Caroline, or Change at the Hampstead Theatre, London. Picture: Alastair Muir

Caroline, or Change continues at the Hampstead Theatre, London until 21 April 2018.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Caroline, or Change comes to the Hampstead Theatre from the small Minerva Theatre at Chichester where it was playing in the same season as Fiddler On the Roof.

It addresses issues of race and politics at a time of social change, but unlike that much revived musical, this one has lain dormant for more than a decade, despite winning the Olivier Award for Best New Musical of 2007.

Edward Hall, artistic director of Hampstead Theatre, and under whose auspicies Caroline, Or Change has transferred, writes in his Welcome that he saw the original National Theatre production but this one seems like an entirely different show, newly minted.

Much of that metamorphosis must be credited to the director Michael Longhurst who has guided his talented company with consummate ease through a labyrinth of more than 60 musical numbers that they deliver with an assurance that does full credit to a piece described by both author and composer as an opera.

Caroline, or Change is set in Lousiana in 1963 as the Amercan Civil Rights movement gathers pace. The stage is bare save for a statue of a Confederate soldier that has stood there since the Civil War of 1861-65.

Caroline herself is the underpaid servant of a middle-class Jewish family who is advised to keep the change in the trouser pocket belonging to Noah, their son, but which in turn challenges her background and spiritual beliefs.

Caught between the need to earn money for her family of four and a fear of trouble ahead, she finally gives vent to her anger in vocal tour-de-force, ‘Lot’s Wife’, a self revelatory scena, akin to ‘Rose’s Turn’ in Gypsy.

In a codicil, Caroline returns to work, and in a theatrical coup-de-grace, we see her rebellious daughter, now singing from the spot where the statue of the Confederate soldier has been torn down, in which she had a hand. Singing proudly of her mother, she vows to continue her work for a nobler cause and her children’s future.

Within this unfolding drama, Tony Kushner has threaded other worldly characters including a singing moon and a dancing washing machine and a devilish dryerwith a red hot element round his neck.

The designer Fly Davis doesn’t miss a trick here or in her stunning designs for an all-girl trio (based on The Supremes) who represent the sounds of Caroline’s radio.

The outstanding cast is headed by the extraordinary Sharon D. Clarke as Caroline Thibodeaux, a performer who expresses amongst other facets, a still voice of calm, drawn from life’s bitter experiences.

Father and son Alastair Brookshaw and Charlie Gallacher (on certain nights) as well as other members of the Gellman are a good ensemble.

The Thibodeaux boys’ dance number (on a stage revolve), with their gangling sister, an exceptional Abiona Omonua, is executed with a debonair aplomb. Indeed it harked back to ‘The Other Generation’, another kids’ song, from Flower Drum Song.

The powerful and intricate score by Jeanine Tesori is a heady mix of 1960s pop with the strains of klezmer, blues, seasonal melodies, and a bit of Mozart from Noah’s clarinet playing Dad.

The singers make light of some occasional awkward word setting under the sympathetic musical direction of Nigel Lilley. He paces the score well and is rewarded with a myriad instrumental colours from his orchestra, placed two sides of the upper gallery which forms the ‘upstairs’ to Caroline’s pantry below stairs.

For anyone interested in the musical theatre a visit to this sublime show is a must.

Adrian Edwards