Redux: CAROLINE OR CHANGE at Playhouse / THE NUTCRACKER at Covent Garden

Now we are at the end of 2018 it was interesting to be able to look back at productions previously seen which are now revived: the Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori musical CAROLINE, OR CHANGE which transferred from Chichester to Hampstead earlier this year and is now shouting out at the Playhouse Theatre and also the Royal Ballet's evergreen - or ever-snowy - THE NUTCRACKER with choreography by Peter Wright.

It was good to see CAROLINE, OR CHANGE again and I found it again to be a musical that resists the urge to make it easy for it's audience, with five characters all locked in their own private mental spaces and who find connecting to be fraught with suspicion and defensiveness which makes for a difficult first act as it's hard to see where the audience's sympathies should lie.  However the second act reveals cracks in the characters' carapaces giving them the possibility of  connecting: mother to daughter, stepmother to stepson.

Sharon D. Clarke is still playing the Louisiana single mother Caroline Thibodeaux who supports her daughter and two sons by being the 'daily' for the Jewish Gellman family.  Caroline spends most of her time in the basement service room with the washing machine, the dryer and the radio - unsurprisingly the creators have these appliances personified and they sing songs that illustrate and comment on Caroline's situation.

Caroline is a defensive, guarded woman, quietly angry at the world and finds it hard to accept affection from any quarter, while her eldest daughter Emmie is quietly angry with society's attitudes and her mother's inability to accept change, Stuart Gellman is a widower still grieving for his dead wife although his has since remarried, his new wife Rose is growing more and more unhappy with her distant husband and his guarded son Noah who is himself still grieving for his dead mother and who constantly tries to engage with Caroline who is amiable but keeps him at arm's length. In the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination, the characters all have to face up to change and all the implications of their actions.

Practically all the original cast have transferred to the Playhouse and the performances have grown with their exploration of the deeply woven characters: Lauren Ward and Alastair Brokenshaw as Rose and Stuart Gellman, Teddy Kempner as Rose's firebrand father from New York and Naana Agyei-Ampadu as Caroline's more outgoing fellow domestic Dotty. There is also stand-out support from Me'sha Bryan as the bubbly Washing Machine and Angela Caesar as the ever-watchful Moon.

Abiona Omonua is marvellous as Emmie who yearns to break free from her mother's demands to be submissive and to stay in her place; she has a lovely singing voice and has a vital presence on stage.  However the show is dominated by the mighty Sharon D. Clarke as Caroline, her solitary pain burns off the stage and you are on the edge of your seat waiting for her eventual explosion and indeed when she breaks and sings the searing "Lot's Wife" Clarke releases a tsunami of pent-up anger and pain that hits hard.  With this role, Sharon D. Clarke ascends to being a true theatre great, and her recent tv appearances in the new DOCTOR WHO will surely bring her a much-deserved wider fame.

Nigel Lilly's music direction brings Tesori's challenging score to vibrant life, Fly Davis' set and costumes look fine in their new home, Ann Yee's choreography is still thrilling and Michael Longhurst's direction holds the whole production together, quite the more remarkable for this being his first musical.  CAROLINE, OR CHANGE is booking until 6th April and I recommend it highly.

In a different world totally to Caroline and her basement is Peter Wright's glorious version of Tchaikovsky's THE NUTCRACKER at Covent Garden.  This was our third time seeing it but it is so magical it is always worth a re-visit. I don't think I can improve on what I blogged in 2015 after my first visit to it:  "The production is simply enchanting, radiating warmth and goodwill like a particularly large glass of mulled wine.  Helped immeasurably by the late Julia Trevelyan Oman's designs, Wright's take on the story has the magician Drosselmeyer mourning that his nephew has been transformed by an enemy into a nutcracker, as you do!  His chance to undo the spell comes with a Christmas invitation to a family where he gives the nutcracker to the young daughter Clara."

Clara and the newly-restored nephew have adventures before visiting the court of the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Prince and also experience the the divertissements organized by Drosselmeyer, and all danced to Tchaikovsky's magical score which features some of ballet's greatest hits.

We were spoilt in 2015 as we saw Francesca Hayward as Clara, Alexander Campbell as The Nutcracker, Gary Avis as Drosselmeyer, Iana Salenko as The Sugar Plum Fairy and Steven McRae as her Prince, a truly memorable cast which has not been replicated since, this year we had Emma Maguire as a vivacious Clara, Luca Acri as an athletic Nutcracker, Christopher Saunders as Drosselmeyer, Yasmine Naghdi as Sugar Plum and Ryoichi Hirano as the Prince.  They were all fine but lacking the star wattage of the 2015 cast, however we were lucky to have the wonderful Itziar Mendizabel as the focal point of the Arabian dance, sinuous and statuesque.

Christopher Carr staged it wonderfully again and the ROH Orchestra made Tchaikovsky's score flood the auditorium to the rafters under the baton of Barry Wordsworth.  If you have never experienced this production you really are missing a magical experience: all performances appear to be sold out for the rest of the run but it does get revived occasionally on cinema screens and the DVD of the production is also available.

CAROLINE, OR CHANGE at Hampstead Theatre - Sharon D. Clarke ain't backing down...

Sometimes a musical comes along that seems so unique that you wonder will it ever find an audience.  One such show is CAROLINE, OR CHANGE which packs so much in that it makes writing about it tricky... where do you begin??

I must admit most of what I knew about CAROLINE, OR CHANGE was from Dori Berinstein's excellent documentary SHOW BUSINESS: THE ROAD TO BROADWAY which covered the 2004 season and the journey from previews to Tony nominations for CAROLINE, AVENUE Q, WICKED and TABOO among others: CAROLINE was nominated for six but came away with only Best Supporting Actress.

I can't remember why I didn't see it in 2006 at the National Theatre when it won the Olivier Award for Best Musical, but when it was announced that powerhouse actress Sharon D. Clarke would be leading a revival at Chichester last year then I knew it would be something to see and hear.  Luckily the revival transferred to Hampstead and it has been announced that it will transfer again to Playhouse Theatre in the west end.

The collaboration between book-writer and lyricist Tony Kushner and composer Jeanine Tesori had a long gestation period as they workshopped and tried different approaches to the material which came from Kushner's own childhood, growing up in a middle-class Jewish family in Louisiana who hired a local black woman to be their maid.  In 1963 - if you are wondering if the Kennedy assassination is mentioned WHADDYA THINK?? - Caroline Thibodeaux is a single mother bringing up three children in Louisiana, just getting by on her wages for keeping house for the middle-class Jewish Gellman family.

The son, Noah, is eight years old and still coming to terms with, not only the recent death of his mother, but his father's remarriage to Rose Stopnick.  It's an unhappy family all-round, Rose is unsure of her position with the phlegmatic Caroline or how she can establish herself with Noah and his still-grieving father Stuart.  Noah has grown closer to the no-nonsense Caroline who let's the boy light her one cigarette of the day in the utility basement.  Caroline is not lonely down there however.. not with the radio and washing machine that sing to her.

As the country reverberates to the death of Kennedy, Rose admonishes Noah for leaving money in his trouser pockets and, to teach him a lesson, tells Caroline that she can keep any money she finds in his pockets.  Although money is a concern, proud Caroline wrestles with taking the boy's money as she has also refused Rose's extra food.  She gives in however, much to her children's delight who can now buy comics and sweets, but what she doesn't know is that Noah is deliberately leaving the money for his friend Caroline.

Rose's father visits for a Hanukkah dinner but events go awry when Caroline's daughter Emmie answers back when the old man talks about Martin Luther King; Caroline is mortified that her daughter would do this and they argue.  Meanwhile Mr Stopnick has given Noah $20 as a Hanukkah present but he has left it in his trousers by mistake... and Caroline doesn't want to give it back.  Change is in the air... how will Caroline cope?

Michael Longhurst's production has a couple of stutters but on the whole it is a remarkably bracing evening, it helps that the show is sung-through although thankfully no Lloyd Webber recitative is in evidence to provoke yawns.  Tesori's score is constantly interesting, using different styles of music from pop to kletzmer filtered through a Broadway idiom to include the two families' stories.

Kushner's story can look bizarre with it's singing washing machine, dryer, radio and even the bus, but the convoluted lives of his characters, all on the cusp of change, is involving; the only odd note is that Noah's father is so mournful over the recent death of his first wife you wonder how or why did he get married a second time to Rose?

The set and costumes by Fly Davis, Ann Yee's choreography and Jack Knowles' lighting all add their distinctive touches to the show and Longhurst has an excellent company who all have moments to shine.  Charlie Gallacher did very well as Noah, he is rarely offstage but kept up a good performance throughout - it's a tough role for just a boy but he did well.  As Noah's father Stuart, Alastair Brookshaw also did well to give a performance through the overall gloom of his character, and Teddy Kempner was very good as Mr Stopnick, Rose's left-wing father who provokes with his arguments.

Me'sha Bryan, Angela Caesar, and Ako Mitchell all gave fine voice to The Washing Machine, The Moon and the Dryer/Bus while T'Shan Williams, Sharon Rose and Carole Stennett are great as collective voice of The Radio which keeps Caroline going through her work day.  It was great to see T'Shan Williams again after her great performance in last year's THE LIFE.

There are very fine performances from Lauren Ward as Rose, the young wife trying to find her place both upstairs and downstairs in her new home to varying degrees of success, and from Abiona Omonua as Emmie, Caroline's oldest daughter who can see the future coming and wants in, no matter how much it will upset her mother.

But the show belongs to the unstoppable Sharon D. Clarke as Caroline.  In possibly the performance of her career, Clarke is relentless as the emotionally-shutdown Caroline.  Unsmiling, terse, radiating a doughty wariness, her Caroline gives no inch - the scene where Noah and Caroline shout insults at each other was ferociously done.  The show's climax is a fierce solo for Caroline - it's like Tesori and Kushner are doing CAROLINE'S TURN, a number where the character finally lets her pent-up passion burst out.

It goes without saying that Sharon D. Clarke ripped through the song with pain and power; as I watched her I thought there is no reason why she should not play Sally in the National's revival of FOLLIES next year...

As Owen said, it was such a relief to see Sharon's beaming smile at the curtain-call!  The news that came through after we saw the show of it's West End transfer was great - if there are any West End awards going for Best Actress in a Musical next year then our Sharon deserves them all.

If you fancy a show that constantly surprises... CAROLINE, OR CHANGE is the one for you.

It will run at the Playhouse Theatre from 20th November to 9th February 2019...