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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Eighteen years ago, the musical had a little more ... hope in it. As Kushner has noted, the story has always been Caroline's tragedy, but in 2003, it used Emmie and Jackie and even Noah to point at possibilities of the non-tragic to come. The musical still ends the same way, but in the audience, we know the U.S. continues to display its own immobility, its own dogged resistance to change. Longhurst's production is therefore brave enough not to brighten, not even at the curtain call. The libretto does for a while pretend there's a kind of slantwise equivalence between the bereaved Noah and the exhausted Caroline, but in 'Lot's Wife,' the show has admitted which grief is the unrecoverable one. 'I'm gonna slam that iron down on my heart,' Caroline cries. 'Gonna slam that iron down on my throat, gonna slam that iron down on my sex.' The sound in the room grows huge and unbearable as a woman gives up on her future, releasing energy like an atom ripping apart. The show can't recover from this intensity; certainly, we cannot. Whatever comes after 'Lot's Wife,' whatever little grace notes the production gives to Emmie and Noah, we stay frozen in that song's nuclear blast.
The collision of musical styles and Kushner's clever, witty lyricism makes Caroline, Or Change a haunting, unforgettable musical. This critic loved its ambition, even if it was occasionally perplexing and opaque. Like Angels in America, the material fleshes out detail and the personal-trousers, musical instruments, comic books, lost coins, and bank notes-while also being proudly political, and showing how centrally politics exerts itself as a force on people's lives.
2002 | Off-Broadway |
Workshop Off-Broadway |
2003 | Off-Broadway |
Original Off-Broadway Production Off-Broadway |
2004 | Broadway |
Broadway Transfer Broadway |
2004 |
West Coast Tour |
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2006 | Washington, DC (Regional) |
Studio Theatre Revival Washington, DC (Regional) |
2006 | London |
Royal National Theatre Production London |
2018 | West End |
London Revival West End |
2021 | Broadway |
Roundabout Theatre Company's Broadway Revival Broadway |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2022 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Actress in a Musical | Sharon D Clarke |
2022 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Revival of a Musical | Caroline, Or Change |
2022 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance Awards | Sharon D Clarke |
2022 | Drama League Awards | Outstanding Revival of a Musical | Caroline, Or Change |
2022 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Actress in a Musical | Sharon D Clarke |
2022 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Revival of a Musical (Broadway or Off-Broadway) | Caroline, or Change |
2022 | Tony Awards | Best Costume Design of a Musical | Fly Davis |
2022 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical | Sharon D Clarke |
2021 | Theatre World Awards | Theatre World Awards | Sharon D Clarke |
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