Carousel - The Drug Inspired Musical!

The music from Carousel washes over you like an old friend and I can see why this pseudo operatic show is so appealing to Opera North, however, I sometimes wonder if Rodgers and Hammerstein were experimenting with LSD when they penned this perennially popular musical!

A friend once commented that he hated musicals because there was a tendency for people to start singing for no apparent reason. "Imagine I was shopping in Morrisons and burst into song to expound the virtues of beans on toast," he would say. I got his point.

Carousel has a lot of singing - and that's fine - but it also has a Heavenly Friend, a Starkeeper and a Heavenly Secretary, and they're the parts that make me think that R&H were on some kind of 'trip' as they were 'fleshing out their ideas' over the piano!

It's not my favourite musical but it is a beautiful score and you can always rely on Opera North to take the established and put a new spin on it with polish, panache and a sprinkling of class; that's just what they did.

It centres around the lives of fairground barker, Billy Bigelow (Keith Higham), his wife Julie Jordan (Gillene Butterfield) and their briefly turbulent marriage which produces a daughter. Only he dies and has to witness his offspring being bullied and leading a lesser life because of the soiled reputation he left behind. But, all ends well, when the Starkeeper lets him go back to earth for a day to set things right! Oh yes there's all sorts of sub plots - and singing - running alongside the core theme as well!

Parts of Carousel sometimes feel overly long, certainly the early meeting between Julie Jordan and Billy Bigelow, and yet Act 1 is relatively short with a marathon second half, driven in part by the long ballet scene. As my 87 year old mother always comments: "I like ballet (pause) but there's no words which can make it hard work!" Thankfully she enjoyed Carousel because there were some words!

But, somehow, it is a musical that will always have life because, if nothing else, it spawned You'll Never Walk Alone and Liverpool FC will keep the memory of Carousel going long after the rest of us have relegated it to the musical archives!

So-called 'lead' parts are often wall paper paste, there's lots of them and they invariably look the same so it is the smaller character parts that have a chance to stand out - the Purser in Anything Goes, the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and, in this instance, Stuart Neal as Jigger Craigin.

Jigger is usually played as a sinister character but, this time, he was a thoroughly despicable weasel with every imaginable jumpy twitch and marginal speech impediment you can imagine; I loved him. Beautifully done.

Anthony Ward's costumes were lavish and his set inventive. As the top of the Carousel rose I thought I was watching Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind! It wasn't overly literal, leaving a lot to the imagination and, sometimes, that's good because it leaves the stage clean for the cast.

This was a solid production, entertaining and fresh with some strong performances. There weren't many weak links and, yes I would recommend it even if I personally would not rush to buy a ticket for Carousel.

In the first half an exuberant Nettie (Yvonne Howard) bursts into song to announce that June was bustin' out of all over. I am pleased to report that the company manager managed to stop June before she got into full flow, and that West Yorkshire Police have now released her with a minor caution!

Until 23rd May at Leeds Grand


photos: Alastair Muir