'Change' Surprises Boston Area

If what’s going on at the Boston Center for the Arts is any indicator of the future of musical theater, Broadway ought to be seeing a lot more angry black maids and precocious Jewish boys in future productions. Anything, really, would be a welcome change from the garbage that’s been filling New York’s largest commercial theaters this season.

Boston, on the other hand, has never been a hotbed of theatrical innovation, prompting many New Englanders to take weekend trips to Manhattan. But right now the SpeakEasy Stage Company is providing the most compelling reason for discerning theatergoers to stay in the Bay State, with its current production of Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori’s chamber opera, “Caroline, or Change.”

In its first New England production after a short, critically-decried Broadway run, “Caroline” tells the story of a poor black laundress (the titular character) working for a middle-class Jewish family in 1963 suburban Louisiana. As bookwriter and lyricist, Kushner drew on his own upbringing for source material, modeling Noah Gellman, the eight-year-old boy who attempts to befriend Caroline throughout the show, after himself.

Kushner’s fingerprints are all over the play. Anyone who has seen or read his magnum opus, “Angels in America,” or most of his other works will recognize his characteristic political touches. What’s so refreshing about “Caroline” is how its politics fold seamlessly into the drama between Noah and Caroline.

As Caroline, Jacqui Parker delivers a performance from the gut that, while a little slow to start, crescendos wondrously throughout the show, culminating in the eleven o’clock number—a nervous breakdown called “Lot’s Wife” where she tries to rationalize a hateful outburst towards Noah.

Parker breaks from the precedent set by Tonya Pinkins of the original Broadway cast and transforms Caroline from a study in controlled rage to a more convincingly human character, shifting the emotional climax of the play from her confrontation with Noah (as it was in the Broadway production) to the performance of “Lot’s Wife.”

But before any of that happens, we see Caroline washing away in her hot basement, amidst Eric Levenson’s well-designed set and under John R. Malinowski’s moody lighting. She isn’t alone “sixteen feet below sea level.” Kushner has anthropomorphized her washer (A’lisa D. Miles, who also plays the moon) into an Arethra Franklin-esque belter, her dryer (Brian Richard Robinson) into a Motown/Michael McDonald knock-off, and the radio into a crooning trio (Emilie Battle, Nikki Stephenson, and Anich D’Jae Wright) that sounds vaguely like the Supremes.

We also meet the impeccably played Gellmans, an adorable—if slightly dysfunctional—Jewish family, curiously out of place in Lake Charles, La. Noah’s father Stuart (Michael Mendiola) has recently married ex-Manhattanite and long time friend Rose Stopnick (Sarah Corey). As Stuart is emotionally adrift, piping away at his clarinet, Rose over-mothers passive-aggressive little Noah (the adorable Jacob Brandt) who resents her trying to take the place of his dead mother.

Out of everyone present, we really feel sorriest for Rose, who manages to remain the moral center of the play while precipitating the events that lead to the domestic and social tragedy. Her decision to let Caroline keep the change Noah leaves in his pants pockets unlocks a Pandora’s box of economic and racial tensions, leading the characters to raise questions about the nature of change (both the social and monetary kinds) as their world shifts and quakes before their eyes.

Her wifely and motherly mistakes notwithstanding, it’s easy to empathize with a character as expertly acted as Rose. Corey’s performance is only topped by Brian Richard Robinson, who portrays both the dryer and a sad bus bringing news of J.F.K.’s assassination to Caroline and her friend Dotty (Merle Perkins). Shavanna Calder also shines as Caroline’s daughter Emmie, bringing some adolescent fire to counter her mother’s repressive anger.

But it’s when the fire cools and we are welcomed into moments of vulnerability between these characters that “Caroline” rises to its most affecting heights. SpeakEasy’s artistic director Paul Daigneault deftly brings out these integral parts of the show, like Caroline and Noah’s bedtime conversations and Rose’s musings about the romantically-distant Stuart (which includes one of the show’s most resonant lines: “How can you be loved by someone who’s not there?”). It’s very wise of him to emphasize the affect beneath the politics, as one of the major complaints about the New York production was that these tender moments were somehow lost.

Despite Daigneault’s emphasis on the emotional undercurrents running throughout Kushner’s story, “Caroline” never achieves the opulent beauty of a show like “West Side Story,” mostly due to the recitative peppered throughout Tesori’s sung-through score, which itself is a hodgepodge of musical styles. But Kushner’s story unfolds with such emotional exactness that a lavish Bernstein-esque score would be a distraction.

The real beauty and heartbreak in “Caroline, or Change” comes from the way Kushner entwines the story of Noah and Caroline’s friendship with the struggle for civil rights, imbuing both aspects of his story with equal dramatic weight.

“Caroline, or Change,” is something completely different in American musical theater—a show that explores politics and interpersonal drama in tandem, the message of one intertwined with the climax of the other. I sure hope it isn’t the last of its kind (I don’t think Broadway can take another Elton John musical). But even if it is, it’s comforting to know that the SpeakEasy production brings out what’s so wonderfully refreshing about the show, succeeding almost everywhere in showing us how change, although necessary, can rip people apart.

Kushner came to the A.R.T. in March 2005 and spoke to a group of Harvard students about the Broadway demise of his show: “I think the best thing I have ever done is ‘Caroline, or Change.’ I have absolutely no doubt that the show is going to come back and triumph at some point in the future.”

Fortunately for Kushner, it already has.

—Reviewer Kyle L. K. McAuley can be reached at kmcauley@fas.harvard.edu.