Sharon D Clarke and Aaron Gelkoff in Caroline, or Change at the Playhouse Theatre, London. Picture: Helen Maybanks
Caroline, or Change continues at the Playhouse Theatre, London until 6 April 2019.
Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
After acclaimed runs at the Chichester Festival’s Minerva and London’s Hampstead Theatre, Caroline, or Change, a collaboration between Fun Home composer Jeanine Tesori and Angels in America author Tony Kushner, makes its much-anticipated return for a run at the Playhouse Theatre.
Caroline began life after a commission from the San Francisco Opera for Kushner to write an original libretto, before a lengthy evolution and eventual premiere as a fully-formed, sung-through musical play.
It’s 1963 in Louisiana and the spirit of change pervades. Recalling moments from his childhood, Kushner writes semi-autobiographically from the perspective of 8-year-old Noah Gellman (future Elder Cunningham shoo-in Aaron Gelkoff) and his fascination and friendship with Caroline Thibodeaux (Sharon D. Clarke) a 39-year-old divorcee and mother of four.
Caroline spends her days in Noah’s family basement as hired help, sandwiched between a washer and dryer on a $30 salary and the radio her only link to the outside. She’s used to salvaging and returning small change from the Gellman garments, but an ethical dilemma takes root when Noah’s scatty new stepmother Rose (Laura Medforth) proposes she pocket the coins in order to teach Noah responsibility.
Now Caroline has the choice of whether to claim a child’s allowance as her own bonus or to resist temptation and leave her and her family floundering financially. As she says early on, ‘[she’s] mean and [she’s] tough, but $30 ain’t enough’.
Clarke commands as Caroline, a woman wrestling to resist the hurricane of change sweeping the decade. Steadfast but never bullish, she remains the picture of modesty a God-fearing morality to the bittersweet end.
Her 11 o’clock number ‘Lot’s Wife’, has none of the pomp and ceremony of a moment like ‘Rose’s Turn’, but offers a dignified moment of self-reflection and revelation no less cathartic.
The Thibodeaux children, Jackie (acrobatic Kenyah Sandy), Joe (adorable David Dube) and Emmie (punchy, dynamic Abiona Omonua) prove perfect foils, popping with energy best channelled in jubilant showstopper ‘Roosevelt Petrucius Coleslaw’, a collective daydream number stimulated by their good fortune and Noah’s fantasy of their gratitude for his act of heroism in going along with his stepmother’s social experiment.
Director Michael Longhurst, in keeping with Kushner’s trademark style, ensures that the surreal is only a flicker away, with a (literally) bubbly Me’sha Bryan inhabiting the Washing Machine, Ako Mitchell cutting an imposing figure as the demonic Dryer, and Keisha Amponsa Banson, Dujonna Gift-Simms and Tanisha Spring forming the Ronettes-evoking Radio.
Elsewhere Angela Caesar’s operatic appearances as The Moon, (a symbol of natural change astutely reflected in designer Fly Davis’ waxing, waning headdresses) and Teddy Kempner as loudmouthed, socially clumsy but no less likeable Mr Stopnick provide moments of great relief amid Caroline’s claustrophobic, pinspot existence.
Tesori’s score effortlessly blends and hops genre from Motown to Klezmer, without a single moment of a contrivance. Each musical moment remains utterly and appropriately incidental to the events played out, co-existing with the plot in absolute harmony. Particularly moving are the woodwind centric moments, evoking the spirit of Aaron’s late mother, regularly remembered for her talent for the bassoon, and the silent grief of his father Stuart (Alastair Brookshaw) rarely seen without his clarinet.
To describe Caroline, or Change elementally is to do the show a great disservice. Its flow appears effortless, its design appropriately deceptive and its cast of characters subtly and considerately drawn despite some bold personality traits and defects. Along with its socially historic insights, it seems to exist to remind us that, as Kushner writes: “change, progress is difficult, uneven, uncertain but also absolutely possible.”
Alex Chard
Tickets for Caroline, or Change are available HERE.
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