You know you’re in Tony Kushner’s superconducting, super-colliding universe when Chanukah, the Kennedy assassination and a singing washing machine all figure into one show.
That’s “Caroline, or Change,” a new musical by Kushner and composer Jeanine Tesori which just opened for a month-long run at San Francisco’s Curran Theater.
As one of America’s foremost playwrights, Kushner is an artist whose every work must be seen, “Caroline” included. But for anyone touched by the genius of Kushner’s “Angels in America,” the new show may come as a bit of a letdown.
“Caroline” does have plenty going for it: a sensational cast of singing actors — led by the amazing Tonya Pinkins and the Tony Award-winning Anika Noni Rose — a swampy moonlit set, an engaging story and a terrific score.
Pinkins plays Caroline Thibodeaux, a surly single mother and maid to the Gellmans, a Jewish family in Lake Charles, La., in late 1963. Eight-year-old Noah Gellman (played alternately by Sy Adamowsky and Benjamin Platt) recently lost his mother to cancer. His emotionally distant father has married Rose (Veanne Cox), a brittle well-meaning New York Jew.
Noah tries to eke out his mothering from grumpy Caroline, who slaves away in the basement. Her best friends: the washer, dryer and radio, all wonderfully brought to life in spectacular supporting performances.
Early in the show, the death of JFK augurs great change both for the South and for the two families, black and white. The catalyst is Noah’s habit of leaving loose change in his pockets. To teach him a lesson, Rose informs Caroline she may keep any money she finds. As the maid notes, “Thirty dollars [a week] ain’t enough,” and after some misgivings, Caroline decides to go along with the plan.
All goes awry when Caroline finds a $20 bill (a Chanukah gift to Noah). That sum is too much for Noah to lose, too much for Caroline to surrender. Their struggle over the money rips the face off their odd alliance.
Along the way, we meet Caroline’s restless daughter Emmie (Noni Rose), Rose’s curmudgeonly socialist father (Larry Keith) and other fantastical characters, notably the moon (Aisha De Hass) whose phases signal how “change come fast, change come slow.”
Tesori’s score borrows from ’60s-era R&B, as well as containing several clever classical references. It all comes together in a pleasingly hyperactive style, mimicking the rapid twisting of an old-fashioned radio dial.
George C. Wolfe’s direction is stellar. This is a downer of a story told almost entirely in nighttime, yet Wolfe keeps things moving, drawing out humor where none might have seemed apparent (especially from Cox as the unlikable Rose and in a raucous Chanukah party scene).
Kushner is a “big ideas” writer and only a canvas as big as the South’s sorry racial history will do for him. Yet perhaps because “Caroline” is semi-autobiographical, he loses objectivity and somewhere in the show’s dramatic arc he makes a rare slip.
The pivotal “loose change” metaphor, while poetic, does not generate all the necessary emotional heat. Kushner sets up ample opportunities to move his audience, yet the show does not deliver, despite Pinkins’ compelling Caroline. Even her release of pent-up fury and sorrow near the end — however powerful in the moment — doesn’t elicit the intended awe and pity.
Standard operating procedure in musical theater is to create a couple of show-stopping numbers, a song or two to hum on the way home and a flammable admixture of razzle-dazzle and pathos.
Kushner never cared much for convention, so there’s no reason to expect a conventional musical from him. That is to his and “Caroline’s” credit.
But even Tony Kushner cannot defy the immutable laws of drama. Character motivations must make sense for an audience to give itself fully to a show. That is lacking in “Caroline” just enough to keep it from greatness.
Kushner remains an artistic giant, and “Caroline” should be seen, despite its shortcomings. Even a Tony Kushner near miss is, relatively, a bull’s-eye.