Carousel is the third free talkshow Piece by Piece podcast from the Pint of Wine stable taking an in-depth look at classic musicals. It follows its Rodgers and Hammerstein stablemate Oklahoma! and Guys and Dolls.
Coming two years after Oklahoma! the show was never going to match the popularity of that first collaboration which ran for five years and 2,212 performances on Broadway. But 890 was a score not to be sniffed at – and there were 566 more when it hit the West End five years later. It has also stood the tests of time and relevance better and aroused the curiosity of directors more.
Dark with controversial themes to set against the positivity of fairground romance, happy families in a fishing community, clambakes and June bustin’ out all over, it is far more demanding than Oklahoma!
As Stephen Sondheim succinctly put it: One was about a picnic, the other about life and death. In any event, it was Richard Rodgers’ favourite .
The Carousel podcast comes in two chunks, the first lasting over an hour and the second, centred on Act II, just under 45 minutes – it’s a sort of extended post-show Q&A session with award-winning MD Joe Bunker (Superhero, The Rink) a relaxed, knowledgeable and well-prepared compere.
Here Bunker gets the inside track from Jo Davies, who directed Opera North’s Carousel, Keith Higham, who played Billy Bigelow for Davies and ENO pair Molly Lynch (Julie Jordan) and Alex Young (Carrie Pipperidge). Davies is a particularly good talker and must be a joy to work with.
Also in the package is a Carousel quiz, which stretches the panel, plus two musical offerings, ‘Soliloquy’ from Higham in episode one and ‘What’s The Use of Wond’rin’?’ from Lynch in episode two.
‘Soliloquy’, Bigelow’s seven-minute solo where he excitedly looks forward to the birth of his first son because of course he’ll be “my boy Bill”, with the same name, equally irresistible to the ladies and he can teach him all the tricks, makes for a particularly fascinating discussion.
It contains some of Hammerstein’s finest lines yet is often overlooked by theatregoers seeking simpler pleasures, the awesome ’If I Loved You’, ‘When The Children Are Asleep’ and of course the Liverpool FC anthem ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, the unforgettable finale.
When it suddenly dawns on Bigelow that the baby might just be a girl, “sweet and pink” and “peaches and cream”, with a different fatherly approach, protecting her from naughty men, required, the warmth and wonder of this Jack the Lad character clarifies: he’s not the sharpest tool in the box yet far more than wife-beater, robber, wastrel and gambler.
We can see there why the impressionable Julie was smitten at first sight and why the widowed carousel owner Mrs Mullin, keen to have Billy for herself, wanted her quickly out of the way.
As Julie sings later on, there’s not much use wond’rin’ once you’ve committed yourself forever because nobody is fully good or bad. All the warnings from her prim friend Carrie are wasted.
In any case even though he smelled of fish Carrie already has her man, the ambitious but pompous Mr Snow, and as we see 15 years later when Billy returns in spirit form to witness all the good things he missed while alive, the Snow-Pipperidge union was remarkably productive if less exciting.
Not everyone who loves Carousel will want to listen to almost two hours of analysis but true aficionados, nerds and inquiring minds will relish the bright and attractive way these podcasts are assembled and in these sorry times, with no chance of seeing the show in a theatre until goodness knows when, they will certainly help to fill a tiny portion of the yawning gap in our lives.
This was the first podcast to have been done remotely because of the Covid-19 lockdown and clearly won’t be the last. Next up is West Side Story with guests from the recent much-praised Leicester Curve and Manchester Royal Exchange productions. It is a venture that deserves supporting.
Jeremy Chapman
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