As bizarre as it reads in print, in his new work
“Caroline, or Change,” playwright Tony Kushner has
written perhaps the first stream-of-consciousness musical.
The difficult literary style associated with modernism, made
famous by James Joyce’s “Ulysses” and Virginia
Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway,” is known in part as an
attempt to make literature a better reflection of real life by
following characters’ thoughts, tracking the way they
associate one topic to another in an attempt to understand their
lives and thinking processes. In terms of plot, not much happens in
a stream-of-consciousness work; “Ulysses” and
“Mrs. Dalloway” both take place entirely over the
course of rather boring days.
Needless to say, it seems a horrible inspiration for a musical,
a theatrical form founded more on the creation of entertaining and
diverting stories than trying to make sense of the incomprehensible
process of human thought ““ which makes it all the more
surprising that “Caroline, or Change” is the brilliant
artistic success that it is.
The actual plot of the musical, on stage in the Ahmanson Theatre
through Dec. 26, can be summed up in just a few statements: In late
1963, Louisiana, Rose Stopnick Gellman (Veanne Cox) tells her black
maid, Caroline Thibodeaux (Tonya Pinkins) to keep any change her
stepson, Noah (Benjamin Platt), leaves in his pants pockets before
Caroline does the laundry. The game, as Rose calls it, works for a
short period of time until Noah leaves a large amount of money in
his pocket, argues with Caroline, says something he
shouldn’t, and hears something he shouldn’t.
What makes “Caroline, or Change” run is the
fascinatingly tragic life stories of its characters, stories
relegated strictly to memory that come out as they see or hear
things in the present that remind them of the past. The most moving
sequences in the play revolve around Caroline’s imagined
conversations with the washing machine (Capathia Jenkins), dryer
(Michael A. Shepperd) and radio (Tracy Nicole Chapman, Marva Hicks
and Kenna Ramsey) that she works with in the basement.
As the play progresses, her mind moves from machine to machine
as each reminds her of different times in her life. Every event and
memory is, dramatically at least, far more interesting than the
present moment in which she lives. But as any fan of Joyce or Woolf
will tell you, don’t we live most of our lives reflecting on
events, not living them? It’s more true to real life to show
people living boring and repetitive lives, remembering past moments
of interest whenever possible, than to show those moments of
interest in the present tense.
But since when have musicals been interested in realism? Since
Kushner started writing them, apparently, and perhaps others should
take note. As the image of the contemporary American musical slowly
fades into insignificance, perhaps it’s time to reexamine
what a musical can do. We already know it can entertain. We know it
can move us. But can it teach us?
“Caroline, or Change” suggests it can, specifically
about the way we think about our own personal pasts and how
difficult it is to change the angle with which we look backward
and, by implication, forward. There are plenty of other lessons to
learn, though. As the opening line clearly states, “Nothing
ever happens underground in Louisiana.” In this case,
that’s fine. It gives everyone more time to think.
-Jake Tracer