"Caroline, or Change"

BY LINDA WINER | STAFF WRITER

May 3, 2004

African-American woman working as a maid, Caroline Thibodeaux, for a Jewish family as the Civil Rights movement is about to ignite in 1963 Louisiana. Aisha de Haas is "The Moon" in Tony Kushner's new musical transferring to Broadway. (Newsday Photo/Ari Mintz / April 14, 2004)

Before "Caroline, or Change" opened at the Public Theater last November, there were tantalizing expectations of creative boundaries broken and political sensibilities challenged.

This was not merely the first musical with book and lyrics by Tony Kushner, but his first work with director George C. Wolfe since the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Angels in America" changed Broadway in 1992. What's more, the score came from Jeanine Tesori, one of the brightest of the theater's bright new voices, returning to a more personal challenge after the utilitarian demands of Broadway's "Thoroughly Modern Millie."

The result, alas, was an honorable but bland piece of tasteful social conscience - full of decency and purpose, but short of the originality and urgency anticipated from such a deeply provocative, high-flying team.

"Caroline" moved to Broadway's Eugene O'Neill Theatre last night, and how we'd love to be able to change sides in the conflicting passions generated by the show. For all its intelligence and occasional bits of off-center musical surprise, however, this remains an almost shockingly ordinary, middle- of-the-road work about the impotent rage of a black maid named Caroline - the magnificently wary Tonya Pinkins - trapped in a reality beyond the seismic effects of the civil rights movement.

This is dignified, well- meaning stuff, liberal in the way radicals from the left once used the word to mean too soft to matter. Although the show's admirers have called it a breakthrough in form and content, we can't help but think of a musical version of "I'll Fly Away," the early '90s TV series about a black maid in the late '50s.

One is tempted to conclude that this collaboration worked too well, that the individuality of Kushner, Tesori and Wolfe has melded into a fourth voice - different together but lacking each one's singularity. Yes, Caroline's world in the basement of a Jewish family in Louisiana comes alive like a musical pop-up fantasy book of the psyche, with a social-agitating washing machine (Capathia Jenkins), a disruptive dryer (Chuck Cooper) and a Greek-chorus of a radio personified by a Motown trio - think "Hairspray" by way of "Little Shop of Horrors" - slinking above the basement in Paul Tazewell's glamour-girl costumes. How extraordinary one finds this idea depends, perhaps, on one's memory of the performing cutlery in "Beauty and the Beast."

Kushner's writing, the voice of his mind, has always made its own music. Some ideas in the story, based in part on his own childhood, are as uncompromised as ever. As lyrics in Tesori's virtually sung-through pastiche, however, his poetry feels almost as imprisoned by song styles as Caroline is by disappointment.

The cast is extraordinary, especially Anika Noni Rose as Caroline's independent daughter and Chandra Wilson as her politically evolving friend. And Pinkins has grown even more devastating in the icy, sulky power of a woman who still, in private moments, begs, "Don't let my sorrow turn evil on me."

The change has two meanings - the obvious one and the kind that falls loose from the pockets of an 8-year-old (Harrison Chad) when his adored maid does laundry. This Jewish family, confused by the assumptions of class, race, religion and the shame of entitlement, includes a father (David Costabile), escaping the pain of his wife's recent cancer death through his clarinet. Veanne Cox is blissfully virtuosic as the new wife, juggling psychological contradictions.

Tesori's music includes a graceful mix of soul, klezmer and even kids' jump-rope songs. The harmonies are ravishing, but the rhymes can be painful (house and mouse, dry and high). And what about the harping on the evils of cigarettes? There were many reasons to feel guilty in 1963, but smoking was not yet one of them.

BROADWAY REVIEW

Caroline, or Change. Book and lyrics by Tony Kushner, music by Jeanine Tesori, directed by George C. Wolfe. Eugene O'Neill Theatre, 49th Street.