Carousel – Open Air Theatre Regent’s Park

Picture: Johan Persson

Carousel continues at the Open Air Theatre Regent’s Park until 25 September 2021.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Rodgers and Hammerstein never sidestepped a gritty issue and their 1945 piece about domestic abuse is no exception – and could hardly, given how cases have risen during lockdowns, be more topical.

Yes, there are some very familiar good tunes in Carousel but there is also a great deal of profoundly shocking stuff – the audience gasped in horror more than once on press night – to make anyone who sees it think long and hard.

Of course the original, based on a short story by Ferenc Molnar, was set on the coast of New England. In Timothy Sheader’s thoughtful production we’re in the north of England and the cast members use their own accents, giving a rich variety and stressing the piece’s universality. The American references in the text don’t matter much either. It’s like seeing Julius Caesar set in a modern state. Your brain just accepts the relevance and allows for minor discrepancies.

And MD Tom Deering’s new orchestral arrangements are fresh, imaginative, accessible and oddly homely, using – among other instruments – accordion and electric guitars, so we’re a long way from the lush strings that 1940s audiences heard.

I love the way, for instance, he throws in the variations and psychs up the texture for each recapitulation in ‘June is Bustin’ Out All Over’. And it is a stroke of genius to bring on a brass band at the start to kick off that famous ‘Carousel Waltz’ and tell the audience that we’re in brass band country.

In a strong cast, Declan Bennett’s Billy Bigelow is nuanced and complex. This isn’t just a man who hits his wife (and daughter in that strange supernatural, second chance judgement episode at the end). He wants to be a better person but fails and suffers desperately in that knowledge. Bennett’s soliloquy after Billy learns that he’s going to be a father is engagingly sung and well judged.

Joanna Riding (an Olivier Award winner for her portrayal Julie Jordan in Nicholas Hytner’s 1993 National Theatre production of Carousel) delights as the warm-hearted, common sensible Nettie who feeds the community and organises the Clambake.

Carly Bawden brings a mature stillness to Julie Jordan when she first meets Billy and thereafter makes her suffering clear but with calm stoicism. She sings in a clear, almost vibrato-free soprano which seems very well matched to her character.

In many ways the star of this show, though, is Drew McOnie’s choreography which is arrestingly muscular. He uses his ensemble to convey all the industry in the area – creating huge dramatic shapes, hammering and mirroring each other. He also provides some spectacular dance scenes and profoundly disturbing sequences such as the construction of a ghost carousel on the constantly moving revolve.

A round of applause for Tom Scutt’s ingenious set too. Deceptively simple, it provides a large ridged circular walkway over which the cast often enter, perform on, climb up, slip down and so on. It is neatly arched to provide an under-cover, on-view area for the orchestra too.

I could see no point whatever in the near-constant puffing of theatrical smoke, however. If it was meant to add atmosphere, it didn’t. There was plenty of that without this rather lazy, obvious device.

But that’s a minor gripe. Carousel is a strong successor to the string of fine musicals (Hello, Dolly!, Into the Woods, The Sound of Music, Porgy and Bess, Crazy For You, Jesus Christ Superstar and more) the Open Air Theatre has produced in recent years.

Susan Elkin