“Oklahoma!” is about America growing into adulthood. “The Sound of Music” pairs romance and family reconstruction with growing moral determination. But “Carousel,” the most emotionally potent of all the great Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II musicals, veers on the tragic, with two lovers who seem to know their lousy destiny from the beginning, and who pass on the profound sadness of their dysfunctional mutual attraction to the next generation. There is hope in “Carousel” — there were limits to how much theatrical sadness audiences were willing to buy in 1945 — but it arrives only after you’re already dead.
That essential core of “Carousel” has rarely been clearer than is the case in Rob Ashford’s profoundly moving new Lyric Opera of Chicago production, conducted by David Chase; it is the third and by far the best of the opera company’s annual spring forays into the beloved Rodgers and Hammerstein canon.
Stacked with Broadway stars and cast with uncommon consistency and shrewdness, Ashford’s production appears directed with Broadway in mind and, well, New York should be so lucky. This is not what one might term an epic staging — a big-budget opera company throwing its heavy resources and operatic conventions at a lyric musical, probing the intersection between its usual line of business and the most gifted musical populists of all time. In fact, the Lyric design from the Italian artist Paolo Ventura (who has never designed any set, anywhere before) is strikingly lean, dominated by miniaturized vistas that feel more picayune European than puritan New England, and suggesting, as profoundly and existentially as any of the scores of productions of this work I’ve seen, the transitory nature of any happiness you can find at a traveling carnival in the company of one who barks for a living.
Ashford keeps his ill-fated lovers, Steven Pasquale’s Billy Bigelow and Laura Osnes’ Julie Jordan, in almost constant motion, their sexual feelings flowing out in fits, starts and regrets as they criss-cross the massive stage at the Civic Opera House, rarely meeting on a trajectory they first intended. Pasquale’s unstinting Bigelow is more inaccessible than some, more brooding than others and greatly aided by the handsome actor’s deep-set eyes, which, on a stage like this, means that the lighting designer Neil Austin can illuminate his jaw and eyebrows while leaving his eyes and intentions hidden in a deep, dark pool.
Osnes, who mostly has been stuck with one-dimensional ingenues and princesses thus far in her career, affords Julie a pervasive sense of melancholy — if there is one show where an actress can get away with playing the end from the beginning, this is that show. But Osnes also offers a very striking window into Julie’s determination to separate from her peers, manifest vocally through the exiting crescendo she constructs for such famous lyrics as “Round in circles I’d go,” where the resilience in the musical swell undermines the lyrical expression of doubt. Julie is a tricky role — notorious in some circles for lines and lyrics that suggest an embrace of spousal violence and victimhood. But Osnes, and indeed this whole production, counter that archaic sensibility with a rich and foregrounded reliance on sisterly community in the face of male ineptitude. The oft-anthemic ensemble singing in “Carousel” is dominated by women, and that counterforce to the show’s self-absorbed men is certainly enhanced when you have an ensemble of the size and quality on offer here.
Other pleasures abound in the casting, ranging from Denyce Graves’ spectacular rendition of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” to Tony Roberts’ avuncular but unsentimental turn as the Starkeeper. As played by Jenn Gambatese (whose initial yearning for marriage is very moving) and Matthew Hydzik (who is surprisingly unpredictable, vocally and dramatically), the generally comic couple of Carrie Pipperidge and Enoch Snow are played as far more of a fractured couple than is typical. The gags are still there, but you also get a strong sense that even in seemingly respectable marriages women have disappointments.
And then there’s Charlotte D’Amboise, who plays Mrs. Mullin as a woman who very nearly gets her man and who, in the second-act dance vision, dusts off her still-formidable dancing chops, controlling a carousel from (and maybe in) hell, a spot she shares with Jarrod Emick’s loathsome Jigger.
That climactic sequence, featuring the absolutely remarkable Abigail Simon as Louise, actually is what lifts this “Carousel” to a different level, when it matters most. Ashford’s choreography here is suffused with deep emotional intensity, and Simon dances so beautifully, the quality of her acting in the crucial final encounter with her father is a bonus, but a crucial one all the same.
“Carousel” leaves a director some room as to whether Julie really sees her errant husband come back to earth to try and mitigate the life he threw away on the back of his anger. Ashford allows Osnes to drink in a long, clear look at the man she ill-advisedly loved before he makes himself disappear. It’s a subtle indulgence but it greatly adds to the emotional oomph of the ending, allowing more hope to creep into what up until then had been such a dark interpretation. Pasquale’s “Soliloquy” was about 80 percent of the way there on Saturday night, although some of that flowed from a distracting mid-number transition that needs more work. Pasquale is at his most effective when he is allowed to communicate his inability to communicate.
I felt Pasquale never achieved much of an emotional connection in his last major Broadway project, “The Bridges of Madison County.” But he has it all going on with Osnes — counterinutitively, being that she does not give in to him for even a moment — her sadness, yes, her lousy fella, no.
Yet the show ends with this ill-fated pair locked in a deeply connected embrace. You have no doubt they see each other, just as you know Simon’s Louise feels her pathetic, gone-for-good, too-little-too-late dad at her graduation. And at the same time, you know if this Billy still were alive, he’d surely be screwing up the lives of the women he loves.
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4 STARS
When: Through May 3
Where: Civic Opera House, 20 N. Wacker Drive
Running time: 3 hours
Tickets: $29-$199 at 312-827-5600 or lyric opera.org/carousel
