Direct from a smash-hit run on London's West End, this new production of Tony Kushner (Angels in America) and Jeanine Tesori's (Fun Home) explosive musical launches to "the titanic dimensions of greatness" (Ben Brantley, The New York Times). The "incandescent" (Holly Williams, Time Out London) Sharon D Clarke stars in an exhilarating, Olivier Award-winning performance as Caroline, an African-American maid whose world of 1963 Louisiana ripples with change both large and small. Erupting with transcendent songs and larger-than-life imagination, Caroline, or Change explores how, in times of great transformation, even the simplest acts shake the earth.
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As the title character of 'Caroline, or Change,' Sharon D. Clarke sings a breathtaking 11 o'clock number called 'Lot's Wife' that sparks thunderous applause; the audience at Studio 54 is clearly thrilled by the performer's soulful delivery. Some surely also burst into tears, saddened by the character's despair. But my enthusiasm for this first Broadway revival of Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori's inventive, thoughtful and affecting collaboration comes not just from those aspects of the show that satisfy audience expectations about big Broadway musicals. What makes this work so powerful, and especially timely, is how this splendid cast tells a small story about change - literal pocket change - while offering a larger glimpse into the complex undercurrents in a tense moment of change in American history.
When Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori's Caroline, or Change opened at the Public Theater in December 2003, later moving to Broadway for a paltry four-month run, we weren't worthy of it. In 1963 Louisiana, an embittered Black maid's ambivalent relationship with her employer's child is poisoned by money. Reviews were mixed, audiences thin. Ticket buyers shied from a multilayered morality tale about broken, grieving people divided by race and class, triggered by charity, who prized resentment over empathy. Today, thanks to an outstanding revival starring the majestic Sharon D. Clarke, we're not just worthy of Caroline, or Change; we are it.
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