‘Caroline’ casts present clashes in past tense

Erin Washington



Two stories, intertwined.

Louisiana, November 1963. Noah, an eight-year-old Jewish boy, is struggling with the death of his mother. His father has remarried her best friend, Rose, who is eager to form a relationship with her new stepson. But Noah is not ready to accept the changes since his mother’s passing.

Louisiana, November 1963. Caroline is the 39-year-old divorced mother of four children. Like all children, they want money to by candy, toys and soda. But Caroline is a poor maid, and she is black.

Set during the Civil Rights Movement, Tony Kushner’s semi-autobiographical musical “Caroline, or Change” is a great story for our time. Its modern operatic style includes more song than spoken word, but the songs contain serious subject matter, following in the footsteps of “Into the Woods,” “Hairspray” and “Little Shop of Horrors.” The latter comes to mind in this current show with the Radio, played by Emilie Battle, Nikki Stephenson and Anich D’Jae Wright, who set the scene perfectly as early ’60s doo-wop girls.

Meanwhile, Noah (Jacob Brandt) and Caroline (Jacqui Parker, artistic director of Our Place Theater Project) have an oddly balanced relationship. Every day he comes home from school and goes to the basement, where Caroline is doing laundry. After talking to the washer and dryer all day she welcomes a familiar face, and some help with the folding. Even though on the surface they barely connect, their expressions reveal the powerful kinship they share.

But this soon changes. When news spreads of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, conflicts heighten between the Jewish Gellman household and the living situation of Caroline and her children. One day, Rose Gellman (Sarah Corey) finds loose change in Noah’s pants pockets. Feeling guilty for the low wages she has to pay Caroline, she decides to teach Noah about financial responsibility by letting the maid keep whatever change she finds. This “change” creates tensions between Caroline and Rose, paralleling the racial tension in America and foreshadowing a racial dispute in the second act. Emmie, Caroline’s oldest daughter, gets into an argument with Rose’s father, a northern white man who doesn’t understand the problems that blacks face.

While “Caroline” is Kushner’s first musical, he has experience with such highly charged subject matter. The playwright is best known for his two-part play “Angels in America,” which was adapted into an HBO miniseries in 2003. “Angels” deals with the controversial topics of homosexuality and AIDS in the 1980s, as well as aging House Un-American Activities Committee member Roy Cohn, himself a closeted homosexual who died in 1986 of complications from AIDS. One of that play’s scenes features a conversation between two characters, one black and one Jewish, paralleling the premise of “Caroline.”

Part One of “Angels in America” ends with an angel crashing through the ceiling of an AIDS patient’s apartment, and the presence of the mystical continues throughout Part Two. Kushner’s experience with such magical elements makes for a smooth transition to musicals, which often emphasize such ingredients. In “Caroline,” the character of the moon, played by A’lisa D. Miles, provides the nighttime link between Noah and Caroline, in the style of “Somewhere Out There” from “An American Tale.” These scenes are the only times they really talk about what is bothering them.

The music of Jeanine Tesori, who scored “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” ranges from the doo-wop of the Radio girls to beautiful solos by Corey, Miles, and Emmie’s Shavanna Calder, and fits the mood nicely. One scene, in which Caroline’s children do a bubbly song and hand game about Noah’s pocket change, will be especially appreciated by the young (and those who remember being young). And then there is the song parodying the importance of Chanukah as a holiday, sung to the tune of “Oh Chanukah.” Throughout the show, the songs have a Stephen Sondheim flair, and the second act borrows the style of Dr. Seuss rhymes.

Parker, who was recently in the Lyric Stage production of “Crowns,” has a lovely voice, although her character is more overbearing. She pulls off the stern but occasionally compassionate Caroline in a captivating way. The character is a hardened, unhappy woman, but her wish for a kiss from Nat King Cole, memories of her husband, and a few smiles toward Noah give her real emotional depth. It is these moments that are the highlights of her performance.

The most meaningful commentary in “Caroline, or Change” is unspoken. The show takes place in Louisiana, and watching its treatment of race relations in light of the recent tragedy in New Orleans adds even more to the already rich story. Hurricane Katrina has opened peoples’ eyes to the fact that the discrepancies between races which existed in the 1960s still exist today, and in addition to entertaining us, “Caroline” reminds us that racism and classism have not yet been eradicated.

“Caroline, or Change” is playing through June 3 at the Boston Center for the Arts’ Stanford Calderwood Pavilion in the South End.

At left: Caroline (Jacqui Parker, center) listens as her washing machine, radio and dryer come to life and burst into song. Below: A’lisa D. Miles illuminates the stage as the Moon in SpeakEasy Stage Company’s “Caroline, or Change.”