We were supposed to go see Caroline, or Change last year before it got postponed due to the pandemic. Despite the rise of the Omicron variant in New York, Roundabout Theater Company has avoided having to cancel any performances. Fortunately, the indomitable Sharon D Clarke, who won an Olivier for playing the role of Caroline on the West End, has remained in good health and she was phenomenal. You would never know she was British as she nails the Louisiana drawl.
Jeanine Tesori's music is a mix of many genres, ranging from Motown to spiritual to klezmer. The dialogue is sung through opera style. Many of the lyrics are actually spoken, kind of reminiscent of Sondheim in that there are no hummable tunes but yet the music is melodic in its own way. The opening chord on the piano gave me goosebumps. The music is haunting. It is accompanied by a low cricket's buzzing that greets you as you enter the theater; you see a confederate statue at center stage and reeds of tall grass on the sides. It transports the audience to the bayou immediately. I did have difficulty understanding the lyrics spoken on stage; only Clarke's diction was clear from the balcony. I otherwise had to concentrate really hard to hear the distinct words that are really crucial to conveying the meaning in the plot.
Caroline is a maid for a Jewish family who does laundry all day in the stifling basement. The radio keeps her company. The appliances and radio and moon and bus are all personified as singing beings. Among them Caroline can let her guard down. She is otherwise rather brusque with her white employers, including the child Noah, who stands in for Tony Kushner himself. The play alternates between Caroline's perspective and Noah's. Noah is young and naive; he doesn't understand the value of money nor the power it holds. He carelessly then purposefully leaves change in his pockets. To teach him a lesson, his stepmother lets Caroline keep the spare change, call it a tip. She puts Caroline in an uncomfortable position. She obviously needs the money but she a grown woman is literally being asked to steal loose change from a baby. The stepmother understands not what value dignity holds for a woman demeaned as a maid. It's good intentions not well thought out, performative at best (reminds you of the present). The story pits against each other two historically marginalized groups who would otherwise typically commiserate. When the stepmother's father comes to visit for Hanukkah from New York, he reveals a more radical perspective, advocating violence, skeptical of Martin Luther King's non-violent methods. It is Caroline's daughter, the next generation, who can afford to be hopeful to Dr. King will deliver them from Jim Crow.
The ending did leave me a little wanting. The plot doesn't really resolve. Or maybe it resolves cynically. It's very real, quite challenging to analyze--not bright, commercial Broadway stuff. It's a corrective of sorts to the nurturing portrayal of the Southern maid in The Help. It is left ambiguous to me whether Caroline returns to work. I think she is resigned to herself, too old to change. But she allows her children to be hopeful? And even that is a kind of change enough. The kids get the final word, though I'm not sure of the significance that the daughter participated in the removal of the statue. Is that hope for the next generation? Does Noah learn anything? Is the play itself what he learned?
