Thoughts on Carousel

Foreward

Before I start in earnest, I should tell you my background and the circumstances under which I write this. I performed Carousel, the musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein, just over a week before I write this review. I have a very weak theater background but a very strong music background. I have sung in some capacity for all but two years since I was five years old, started playing the viola at age 11, learned handbells at 12, and taught myself the English horn and oboe at age 16. I have sung in six church choirs, three college choirs, and three (quite excellent) community choirs; I have played viola in two community orchestras as well as several small ensembles.

I have performed in musicals before, if they could be truly called that. These were of the “children’s musical” variety, the kind where kids get up front and sing, but primarily to look cute and not so much to tell a story. Certainly not to act or deliver a message (or even a performance). I have also performed songs from musicals before, some of them even on stage, but it was always just the songs. I sang in two short operas, too; those were “real” roles, though small parts: I played the Monster in Francesca Caccini’s La Liberazione di Ruggiero and the Tree in Maurice Ravel’s L’enfant et les Sortilèges as a graduate student. Anyone who has seen either of those will know that there is very little staging to be had in either of those parts, even for an opera. The Tree never moves (as trees tend to do), though it was interesting to sing for twenty minutes or so without being able to hear my voice properly, since the tree costume covered my ears and thus I only got to hear conduction through my own head. The Monster has a very corny, silly, and boring role (as 15th Century opera roles tended to be), and is only on stage for about two minutes total.

Enter Carousel. I knew nothing about the musical at all coming in—I had no idea what it was about, no idea when or where it was set, or who the characters were. I had not even heard any of the songs before I showed up at the first chorus rehearsal. I was cast, as I knew I probably would be from the circumstances of our production, as Billy Bigelow. I knew it was the main part, but I had no idea it was considered one of the most challenging parts in musical theater until someone told me after one of the performances.

I feel it is important to state this: I have yet to see the movie, which I have been told changes the story drastically, and I plan to add a postscript to this review after I do so. But know that what you are about to read is based solely on my own reading of the script, my performance and interpretation of Billy Bigelow’s character, other actors’ and actresses’ interpretations and performances of their characters, notes and directions from our director, and things I have read about the musical.

My journey through Carousel

I will walk you through the play exactly as I remember it. Recall that I performed this for the first time nine days ago, and I have seen no other performance except for clips on YouTube of various songs from the musical.

Act I

The scene begins at Mrs. Mullin’s carousel. It is unclear from the script whether this carousel travels around the state and comes back to this town every few weeks or so, or whether it is permanently located there (like a 19th Century version of Six Flags, say). It is most likely that it is a permanent fixture, judging by Mrs. Mullin’s appearance throughout the rest of the musical and Billy’s line (to Julie), “You don’t come by the carousel much; I’ve only seen you three times before today,” to which she replies “I’ve been there much more than that.” The scene, which our production had to do with some imagination due to our inability to build an actual carousel, starts with Billy giving his barker’s spiel, entrancing all the patrons and getting everyone excited about the carousel ride. Everyone except Julie, that is, who is just standing there staring at him and not paying attention to a word that he is saying. This distracts Billy—“Why isn’t this girl hanging on my every word?” is the question I’ve always imagined in his head at that moment—and he gets distracted by her enough to forget that he is in the middle of a speech and he stops talking and starts staring back. Mrs. Mullin is quite upset by this, and gets Billy’s attention back on his work. He quickly snaps out of his trance, redoubling his efforts and ignoring Julie again.

Billy’s speech over, the carnival crowd starts to pile into line, trying to get themselves spots on the carousel. Billy notices Julie again, this time blocked out by the crowd and unable to push her way onto the ride. He laughs, walks over to her, and helps her through the crowd. Mrs. Mullin is further enraged, and stomps her own way through the crowd, demanding that Julie pay for her ticket. She finally manages to produce the desired payment, only for Mrs. Mullin to take her sweet time handing over her ticket until the ride has already started. Billy sees Julie, afraid to step on the moving platform, and laughs at her again, very amused by this girl. He hoists her onto the platform, and onto the last available horse. Since the ride is now moving, he simply stands there and leans against her horse for the rest of the ride. For him, this is nothing; it’s nothing he hasn’t done dozens of times before, and she’s not special except for her lack of attention to his speech. When Julie reaches out to get the brass ring, she is a few inches too short, and is very tentative. Billy laughs again, puts his arm around her waist so she can lean farther, and helps her grab it.

I can just imagine Mrs. Mullin’s reaction to that: not only has this girl distracted her barker and almost cost her a bunch of custom, he has now given the same girl a free ride on her carousel.

Fortunately, we don’t have to guess what happens next. Mrs. Mullin decides to make an example of Julie and her friend Carrie, expelling them from the carousel. Unfortunately, Mrs. Mullin is still arguing with the two of them when Billy walks by. When he finds out that Mrs. Mullin is throwing Julie out because she let him be “so free with” her, Billy realizes Mrs. Mullin is jealous and decides to engage in one of his favorite activities: pushing Mrs. Mullin’s buttons. He invites Julie back any time she wants, and adds that if she can’t pay, he’ll pay for a ride for her. Mrs. Mullin tries to push Billy back (notes in brackets are how I interpreted this scene, with some help from our director):

MRS. MULLIN: “Big talker, ain’t you Mr. Bigelow? I suppose you think I can’t throw you out too? Well, just for that, you’re discharged.
[Billy just roles his eyes, as if to say, ‘Not again”]
Your services are no longer required.
[Billy looks over at Julie and winks; Mrs. Mullin is fuming, and he’s enjoying himself immensely.]
You’re bounced, see?!?

To me, this is the most important scene in the whole musical: it sets up the type of relationship Billy had with Mrs. Mullin, which was evidently the type in which he enjoys pushing her buttons and she enjoys having her buttons pushed; it establishes that Billy is a good barker and that Mrs. Mullin really doesn’t think she can get by without him, enough so that she has fired him at least once before and then asked him to come back; it suggests that Mrs. Mullin’s true fear is losing Billy, especially to some “chippie” (1870’s for “slut”); and it strongly implies that if Mrs. Mullin had simply let Julie and Carrie go and never said anything at all to them, Billy would have dismissed her from his mind (as he does with every other girl who comes to the carousel to flirt with him), and the entire sequence of events would never have taken place.

Instead, Billy is “bounced,” and goes back to the carousel to get his things. He tells Julie or Carrie to wait until he gets back so they can have a drink. This scene establishes several things about Carrie: (1) she’s a complete airhead, (2) she loves a herring fisherman named Mr. Snow who is “an almost perfect beau” even though “he spends so much time on his round-bottomed boat that he can’t seem to lose the smell of fish,” (3) that she didn’t want to tell Julie about becoming engaged to him because Julie didn’t have a “feller of her own” and that she therefore understands how Julie feels about Billy. This being a musical, Carrie’s story takes the form of a catchy tune, “Mister Snow.”

This scene is telling. Evidently Julie even looking in a man’s direction is Carrie’s idea of romance, and Billy asking them out for drinks was on par with Mr. Snow asking Carrie to marry him. Hmm. This is not the first time we will see Carrie’s lack of tact in action; more later.

Billy then returns, and utters one of my favorite sets of lines:

BILLY: “You still here?”
CARRIE: “You told us to wait for you.”
BILLY: “Well, what did you think I wanted with two of you? I meant that one of you was to wait. The other can go home.”

BILLY: “You had your supper?”
JULIE: “No.” [awkward pause]
BILLY: “Want to eat out on the pier?”
JULIE: “No.” [pause; Billy is confused]
BILLY: “Anywheres else?”
JULIE: “No.”

This scene fascinates me. Evidently, Mr. Bascombe believes he is doing these women a favor by sequestering them at night, refusing to let them out, and more or less keeping them prisoner; doing anything less, in his mind, is a recipe for criminal behavior! The policeman that meets him has an instant dislike of Billy, informs Mr. Bascombe that Billy has been reported to “make a specialty of young things like [Julie]” and take their money, and threatens to throw him in jail if he only had a reason. None of this phases Julie, of course, who just goes on as if nothing happened. The scene also establishes Billy’s almost unnerving respect for (or at least fear of) policemen, which is crucial to the holdup scene that comes later.

The next scene revolves around the song, “If I Loved You,” a beautiful and subtle alternating dialog between Julie and Billy. Julie subconsciously picks away at every barrier Billy has constructed to protect himself from getting involved with girls. Her puzzling behavior continues to fascinate him, and he starts dropping his guard more and more often. He asks her to dance, but she firmly refuses: she’s “never going to marry…and a girl who don’t marry has got to be much more perticler.” Billy, before fully realizing what he’s about to say, replies, “Well, suppose I was to say that I’d marry you.” I have always loved that line—in my performance, I followed that up by turning out to the audience, messing up my face, and mouthing the words, “marry you?!?” (as in, “Where did that thought come from?!?”) He recovers quickly, though. Later, Billy starts to get comfortable again, and sings, “On a night like this, I start to wonder what life is all about”; Julie completes his thought with one of her own: “And I always say two heads are better than one to figure it out.” Billy, brought back to reality and realizing that she always manages to get in under his guard, puts his guard back up.

It doesn’t last, of course: Julie, perhaps without really knowing what she’s doing, manages to say or do exactly the right things to disarm Billy. The last thing she does is counter his last defense:

BILLY: “I’m not the kind of feller to marry anybody. Even if a girl was foolish enough to want me to, I wouldn’t.”
JULIE: “Don’t worry about it, Billy.”
BILLY: “Who’s worried?”

What happens next is not stated explicitly. All we know is that by the end of June (less than two months later), Julie and Billy are married for two months (well, slightly less than that, obviously), implying they went off and eloped either later that night or the next morning. I had trouble accepting this until someone pointed out to me that they are now both homeless and jobless, and thus it makes more sense to rush things along a bit.

The next scene opens in June at Julie’s cousin Nettie Fowler’s spa. In our production, Nettie had a sister named Hettie, and the two operated the spa together; I thought this was a charming addition to the musical, and it gave us the opportunity to split the role so more people could be involved. The purpose of this scene is primarily to set up the clambake scene later; the importance of that scene is extreme, but we’ll talk about that when we get there. One of the musical’s famous songs, “June is Bustin’ Out All Over,” is sung at this point. I was personally somewhat grateful that I didn’t have to sing on it, as I have never seen why people like that song as much as they do. It is lively, though, I’ll give you that.

The next scene is very important. Julie returns, and she has been looking for Billy for more than a day. Carrie asks her whether she found him, and she says, no, he went out with his new friend Jigger Craigin (a sailor on a whaling boat) and didn’t come home all night. Carrie asks whether he has a job, and Julie again says no, and that it upsets him greatly. Carrie asks why the “carousel woman” won’t take him back; Julie says she thinks she would, but he won’t go back and won’t tell her why. She then reveals that Billy struck her the previous Monday. Carrie, in her usual tactless way, variously tells Julie to leave Billy, that he’s “a bad ’un,” and that, “Mr. Snow says that a man who can’t find work is just bone lazy.”

Carrie’s lines here are extremely telling. I recall during our second performance that I said, “Carrie is so rude to Julie,” at this moment. Her husband, who she clearly loves despite the fact that he is unskilled, unemployed, and homeless, has been out of work for two months and is so upset by it that he lashed out at her when she confronted him, and all Carrie can say is that he must be lazy. I actually sympathize quite strongly with Billy and Julie in this scene, and I speculate that the topic they were discussing when the hitting occurred was the answer to Carrie’s question: Why don’t you go back to work for the carousel? Billy has clearly explored that option, but Mrs. Mullin told him (and later tells him again) that she won’t hire him if he’s still married. Billy is in a hard position here: he lost a job that he loved—and was very good at—because his boss got jealous over his attentions to a woman. That same woman is now his wife, who he feels compelled to support (especially since he is responsible for her losing her job), but the only job he knows how to do, the only job anyone would hire him to do, is the one he lost to marry her in the first place. Many people condemn Billy for striking Julie in this scene. I say that such people have never had frustrating times in their lives. The human brain reacts differently under severe stress than it does under normal circumstances. I’m not saying it was alright for him to hit Julie—no one is more upset about that happening than Billy himself, and a key aspect to his character is the idea that he can still recover, he can still overcome his sense of personal failure, if it doesn’t happen again. More on that later.

Meanwhile, Carrie announces her engagement to the assembled girls (previously, Julie was the only one who knew). She starts to sing about how wonderful it will be when she marries him (“Mr. Snow, Reprise”), when suddenly he walks in and joins her song. Julie reports he is exactly like Carrie described him (I have always thought that she should be making a face at the smell of him when delivering this line). Carrie introduces Julie to him more formally, and tells her she can kiss him, since she’s right there watching her. Julie realizes at that moment how much she misses Billy, and how strained their relationship is at the moment, and bursts into tears. Billy comes back from his night of drinking and being boisterous with Jigger and his whaling buddies right at that precise instant. He clearly thinks Julie has been talking about him (and she has, though not as negatively as he might suspect); this seems confirmed when Enoch says, “Mr. Bigelow, I almost feel like I know you.” Billy glares at Julie, then pushes past Enoch without giving him the time of day to get some breakfast from the leftovers on the porch. Julie tries to stop him so they can talk, but he says, “All right, say it: I stayed out all night, I ain’t workin’, and I’m livin’ off your cousin Nettie.” Julie insists she didn’t say anything, but Billy knows she’s thinking it. She begs him to come back in time for the clambake, which she has so been looking forward to; he refuses, implying he would not waste his time on something so stupid as a clambake. Julie is devastated, runs into the house to hide her humiliation, and leaves Carrie and Enoch on the porch.

Now for the really telling lines from Carrie and Enoch:

CARRIE: “I’m glad you ain’t got no whoop-jamboree notions like Billy.”
ENOCH: “Seems to me a man had enough to worry about, gettin’ a good sleep o’ nights so’s to get in a good day’s work the next day, without goin’ out an’ lookin’ fer any special trouble.”

Enoch then explains his plans for the future in a very telling duet with Carrie. In one of my favorite songs, “When the Children Are Asleep,” Enoch announces that he plans to invest the profits from selling herring to buy another boat, then two more, then a fleet, then a great big fleet. He’s going to get rich by canning herring and calling them sardines. No, he and Carrie are going to get rich. No, he, Carrie, and all of them. Carrie, at this point, is thinking, “Does he really mean ‘children’ here? We’re not even married yet!” He explains that they’ll have a child their first year of marriage, then another the following year; she’ll “soon be darning socks for eight little feet!” Carrie at this point has heard enough and demands to know whether he’s building up to another fleet, this one of children. The song continues as a duet about their future together. While their singing together is intended to show their love for each other, it should be noted that Enoch interrupts Carrie at least twice during the song. According to Rodgers’s biographer, this was done intentionally to cement the controlling and emotionally abusive Enoch Snow’s relationship with Carrie. Also note that she thinks it ridiculous to have even four children.

Immediately afterward, Billy returns with Jigger and the drunk/hungover whalers (“Blow High, Blow Low!”). This scene witnesses Billy hanging on Jigger’s every move. Jigger has clearly used his charisma to suck Billy in, and Billy is so down on his life at the moment that he is looking for someone—anyone—to make him feel like he’s not a total loser.

The whalers leave, and Jigger discusses his plan to rob Mr. Bascombe, the owner of his ship, of the $3000 payroll that he’s bringing to the captain later that night. It should be noted that, in this time and place, a family of five or six could subsist for one year on about $150 (assuming they had a house and a small plot of land to grow a garden, say). From extrapolated Consumer Price Index data (which began in 1913), I estimate that $150 in 1873 is about $15,000 today, and $3000 then would be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $250,000 today, so this was some serious cash. Billy is very skeptical of Jigger’s plan, and refuses to participate because Mr. Bascombe would have to be killed. Jigger prods him by appealing to his greatest insecurities:

BILLY: “Does he have to be killed?”
JIGGER: “No, he don't have to be killed. He could give up the money without bein' killed. But these New Englanders are funny. They'd rather be killed. Well?”
BILLY: “I won't do it. It's dirty!“
JIGGER: “What's dirty about it?”
BILLY: “The knife!”
JIGGER: “Alright, forget the knife. Just go up to him with a tin cup, and say, ‘Please sir, will you give me $3000?’ See what that does for you.”
BILLY: “I ain’t goin’ to do it!” [stomps back toward house]
JIGGER: “ ’Course, if you got all the money you want, and don’t need…”
BILLY: “I ain’t got a cent. Money thinks I’m dead.” [I interpreted him to be close to losing it when he says this.]
JIGGER: “That’s what I thought. And you’re out of a job, and you’ve got a wife to support…”
BILLY: [advancing on Jigger threateningly] “You shut up about my wife!”

Just as Billy confronts Jigger, Mrs. Mullin arrives. I’ve always thought Billy should say, “What next?” or, “This day keeps getting better and better!” under his breath during this scene. Mrs. Mullin is there to coax him back to the carousel. Billy says he won’t leave Julie, to which Mrs. Mullin says, “you beat her, don’t you?” Billy’s reaction here is very important:

“No, I don’t beat her, what’s all this fool talk about beatin’? I hit her once, now the whole town thinks I’m…I swear, the next person I hear, I’ll smash….”

What follows was my favorite scene in which Billy is on stage. Julie is clearly very nervous about how he’ll react to the news, and Billy is clearly completely clueless as to what she’s trying to tell him (and, at first at least, still angry with her for interrupting his conversation with Mrs. Mullin). She tries three or four times to get him to figure out the news without her having to say it, so she can get some idea how he’s going to react. Finally, she realizes she’s just going have to say it and brace for impact: she’s going to have a baby. The next non-spoken scene is priceless. Julie stands there, back to Billy, terrified that he will become angry, decide to leave her, or perhaps even hit her again; Billy sits on the bench, absorbing exactly what she just said with a confused expression. The confused expression becomes a thoughtful smile, then a delighted one, then an ear-to-ear grin. He walks to her and embraces her, and all the tension and fear drains from her face as she realizes how happy he is. In this moment, Billy forgets all about Mrs. Mullin, all about his money troubles, the fact that he hit Julie last week, everything; nothing matters but her. Just as they’re going into the house, Jigger calls to Billy. Julie is uneasy, but Billy signals he’ll be right there, then tells Jigger that she’s going to have a baby. Jigger is indifferent, which disgusts Billy; he leaves Jigger alone on stage, and Jigger says to himself, “My mother had a baby once.”

Billy retreats into the house with Julie, and Mrs. Mullin comes back. She and Jigger have a very entertaining conversation, filled with hate, in which we find out, among other things, that Jigger hung out with a boy named Roberts last summer, and the Roberts boy ended that encounter with a policeman’s bullet in his heart. Clearly Jigger has no qualms about taking advantage of hard luck cases, and has a criminal history as well. My favorite line (in our production, anyway) in this scene was Jigger's departing insult to Mrs. Mullin: “Put on a new coat o' paint! You're startin' to peel…old pleasure boat! Toot! Toot!”

Jigger leaves, and Billy comes back in to finish his breakfast, not caring about anything that just happened and not even noticing that Mrs. Mullin is there until she comes over to him and sits on the bench. She is furious that he is not coming back, and can’t figure out why. When Billy tells her he’s going to be a father, she laughs at him. Billy is rightfully insulted, and chases her off angrily.

What comes next is the hardest and possibly best song in the musical (“Soliloquy”), and one of the most challenging pieces in musical theater. Billy brushes off Mrs. Mullin (the giant buzz-kill), then starts thinking about Julie (her theme, from “You’re a Queer One, Julie Jordan,” plays). Just as he’s about to go back to breakfast or back into the house, a thought occurs to him. “I wonder what he’ll think of me?” He sings for the next four minutes about how great it’s going to be to have a son, and all the things he’ll teach him to do and how they’ll have fun together. Suddenly, he thinks, “Wait a minute. What the Hell. What if he—is a girl?” Sad about losing his son Bill, he worries what he, “a bum with no money,” could do for his little girl. He sings for three more minutes about how proud he’ll be of his daughter, how she’ll be a perfect match with her mother at her side, but then he frantically realizes that he is still homeless and jobless. He resolves to do whatever it takes to provide for his daughter—he doesn’t know how to get money, but he’ll try, even if it kills him.

I had a lot of people tell me before and after our performances that this piece was one of their favorites. Some liked the part when I was singing about “my boy, Bill”; others liked the slower parts about having a daughter. Still others were entranced by the ending: “She’s got to be sheltered and fed and dressed, in the best that money can buy! I’ve never known how to get money, but I’ll try, by God, I’ll try! I’ll go out and make it, or steal it, or take it, or die!” I’ve had every part of this song running through my head for three months now, and it shows no sign of leaving any time soon.

The aftermath of this newfound dilemma is that Billy resolves to do whatever it takes, even rob Mr. Bascombe, to provide for his daughter. He agrees to go to the clambake with Julie (which cheers her greatly), and concedes to Jigger that he will take a knife from the kitchen to use as a weapon. Julie sees him show Jigger the knife, and is wary, but says nothing.

Act II

The clambake is a success (“This Was a Real Nice Clambake“). Billy and Julie had a great time together, and have a very cute and enjoyable time together. [In our production, Billy started the scene asleep on Julie’s lap; she wakes him by tickling his nose with an uprooted blade of grass, and continues to tease him with it throughout the scene until he gets up and lunges at her playfully, attempting to take it away. Both the actress that played Julie and I thought this was one of our favorite bits of acting in the whole musical.] Afterwards, Billy asks Jigger what his plan is. Jigger is characteristically vague, telling him nothing useful (and proving to the audience that Jigger actually has no clue what he’s doing; he’s just taking advantage of Billy). Carrie summons Billy back to help Julie.

With Billy gone, Jigger attempts to seduce Carrie. She rebuffs him awkwardly, so he tries a new tactic: pretend he’s teaching her how to defend herself against “unprincipled” men. This tactic seems to work; Jigger tells Carrie he’s showing her how to do a fireman’s carry, then proceeds to carry her off toward the woods (presumably to complete the seduction). Just then, Enoch enters, in what is one of the funniest scenes I have ever seen. My favorite line in the entire show is Carrie’s response to Enoch’s complaint:

ENOCH: “I never thought I’d see the woman I am engaged to bein’ carried out of the woods like a fallen deer!”
CARRIE: “He wasn’t carryin’ me out o’ the woods! He was carryin’ me into the woods. No, I don’t mean that!”

“I’ve never seen it yet to fail.
I’ve never seen it fail.
A girl who’s in love with a virtuous man
Is doomed to weep and wail.

Stonecutters cut it on stone,
Woodpeckers peck it on wood,
There’s nothin’ so bad for a woman
As a man who thinks he’s good.

“My mother used to say to me,
‘When you grow up my son,
I hope you’re a bum like yer father was,
’Cause a good man ain’t no fun!’…”

Instead, Julie, ever the true friend, sings to Carrie to give her some hope. It’s my favorite song in the show, “What’s the Use of Wond’rin’,” and though it is sung to Carrie, Julie is clearly singing more about her relationship with Billy than about Carrie and Enoch. The song is heartbreaking, especially when you remember that Billy has agreed to participate in a robbery with a “friend” who has a history of killing off his accomplices (or getting them arrested). Right on queue, Billy and Jigger wander by, on their way to the island for the robbery. Julie insists that Billy go with her instead of Jigger, and in trying to stop him, feels the knife under his chest. She tries to take it, but he easily overpowers her and leaves her, in tears, on the ground.

To me, this is the saddest scene in the entire play. You know that this can’t come out well, you know Julie is probably going to be a widow and their child fatherless. It doesn’t help that the chorus sings at the end,

“Common sense may tell you
That the ending will be sad,
And now’s the time to break and run away.
But what’s the use of wond’rin’
If the ending will be sad?
He’s your feller and you love him,
There’s nothing more to say.”

The next scene involves a very revealing card game that Billy and Jigger play to pass the time (since it appears Mr. Bascombe is “a little late” today). Billy is a nervous wreck, pacing and jumpy, so Jigger takes advantage of him yet again. This time, they play 21 on credit with the money they have yet to steal. After losing two hands straight (actually three, counting the one he lost on the 80¢ he had on him), Billy asks Jigger if he’s cheating (“Me? Do I look like a cheat?”), which he clearly is. Billy loses three more hands and $1400 before he nearly tears Jigger’s head off—he finally figures out that he’s cheating after he gets 21 for the third hand in six deals, the other three being hands when Billy went bust. Just as Billy grabs him, Jigger sees Mr. Bascombe coming from over his shoulder. They scatter to their positions, and Billy is clearly as nervous as he’s ever been, his hands shaking and his heart racing. The robbery fails when Mr. Bascombe catches Jigger and pulls a gun on Billy. Jigger manages to shake loose and get away, but Billy is cornered by Mr. Bascombe on one side, a sailor on the other, and later a policeman coming up the road (the same one who called Billy a low-down scallawag on the bench with Julie two months earlier). Billy, seeing no way to avoid a prison sentence, not wanting to admit his failure yet again to Julie, and being so wound up that he can’t think straight, stabs himself with the knife.

The townspeople come back from the clambake just as Billy bleeds to death. His last words are to Julie; he tells her that he was trying to get money so they could sail to San Francisco and start again, and that, if she wants, she should tell the baby that. Right in character, Julie is the one to comfort Carrie in the wake of Billy’s death. Carrie’s first words to Julie after the death of her husband are, “Don’t hate me for sayin’ it, but you’re better off this way…He’s better off too, poor feller.” My reaction to this is, “What a terrible friend. Her husband dies, and you say it’s for the better?” It’d be one thing if Julie hated him, or if he beat the tar out of her every day and she was constantly afraid of him, but that wasn’t the case. She very clearly loved him, and he loved her. Somehow, Enoch forgives Carrie after this happens, so Billy’s death may have saved their relationship.

Mrs. Mullin returns, has a silent good-bye with Billy, and fixes his hat so it’s not crooked (in the original production, it was his hair, but his hat fit better with ours: first, with Julie’s line about liking the way he wears his hat, second, with the fact that I don’t have very much hair anymore). Julie watches her go, then puts the hat back where it was. I suspect this was an incredibly touching scene, and I truly wish I could have watched it without my eyes being closed! Julie says her good bye to Billy, and tells him something she was afraid to say before: she loves him. She turns to Hettie, and asks what she’s going to do, which prompts one of the other tear-inducing songs in the show, “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”

Suddenly, the Heavenly Friend appears and summons Billy away. He has no idea what’s going on, and is upset that Julie can’t hear him until it is explained that this is his fault for killing himself. [In our production, the Heavenly Friend was also the orchestra conductor; she punctuated this line, that Billy decided that Julie couldn't hear him when he killed himself, by jabbing me in the chest with her baton.] He then demands to be taken before God himself (“The Highest Judge of All”): Jigger told him before the card game that there was no chance of him meeting God, and Billy is determined to stand up for his rights—he’s dead, and has nothing else to lose. “Let the Lord shout and yell, let his eyes flash flame!” he says. “I promise not to quiver when he calls my name! Let them send me to Hell, but before I go, I feel like I’m entitled to a whale of a show!”

Billy is now confronted by the Starkeepers, in a very touching scene. Billy very clearly regrets leaving Julie, and it tears him up inside to know that he hit her, but he’ll be damned (literally) before he admits being ashamed of loving her or regretful for anything he did. He is proud until the bitter end, but the Starkeepers insist he can be as “sot and pernicketty” as he wants; their patience is as endless as time, and they can wait. He might not be so fortunate, however.

Billy demands to know whether he has a baby boy or a baby girl, and one of the Starkeepers lets slip that it’s a girl, but she’s not a baby anymore: she’s fifteen years old. They offer to let him see her, hoping that Billy will be able to help her. Billy observes Louise, his 15-year-old daughter, going through much the same moodiness and rebelliousness that he went through at the same age. This is of course why the starkeepers thought he could help her, and was probably the only one who could.

Billy agrees to go down to try to help Louise, and witnesses Enoch and Carrie’s oldest son, Enoch Jr. (the eldest of nine), conversing with Louise. Louise confides in him that she’s planning to run off with an acting troupe, much like her father did with the carnival at the same age. Billy is disheartened, but becomes extremely worried when Enoch Jr. says he’ll stop Louise from running away by marrying her. He says the hardest thing will be to pursuade Enoch Sr. to let him marry “beneath his station”; Billy is livid, until Louise insults Enoch Jr., insults his father in return, and pushes him out the door. Billy is as proud as a peacock at his daughter’s evident good taste and trips Enoch Jr. on his way off stage. However, he turns around and sees that Louise is devastated and in tears.

Attempting to help her, Billy makes himself visible to her, and offers some good words about her father (the first she has heard from anyone other than her mother). He quickly runs out of things to say, however, so he attempts to change the subject and give Louise the star he lifted from the Starkeeper. Louise is immediately uneasy of the strange man offering her a star, and tries to chase him away. Billy becomes frantic, not knowing what to do, and in his frustration, slaps her hand away. Realizing too late what he has done, he tries to say something, but no words come out. Louise runs into the house to fetch Julie, and the Starkeeper condemns Billy for lashing out against someone he loves yet again—the only way he seems to know how to deal with difficulty.

I interpreted this scene as follows: Billy clung, strongly, to the idea that he (and perhaps God as well) could still forgive himself for hitting Julie because it only happened once. Once he hits Louise as well, he's forced to consider the possibility that he actually is irredeemable. This is devastating for him. The emotions I tried to push across my face in those five seconds or so were so complicated that I'm almost positive I failed completely to deliver anything close to the performance I was hoping for. My only hope is that it was enough.

In what is probably the most touching scene in the whole musical, Julie arrives on stage, demanding to know where the strange man is who hit her daughter. She stops suddenly, staring wide-eyed at Billy. He doesn’t want her to see him, so she only catches the briefest glimpse of him before he vanishes, but she somehow knows he is there and that he has come back for some reason. She comforts Louise, and then picks up Billy’s star. Then he sings to her, a reprise of “If I Loved You” with different words:

“Longing to tell you, but afraid and shy,
I let my golden chances pass me by.
Now I’ve lost you,
Soon I will go in the mist of day,
And you never will know
How I loved you
How I love you.”

The play ends at Louise’s high school graduation, at which Billy is given one more chance (and some help from the Starkeepers) to give Louise and Julie one last ray of hope. There is only so much he can do, of course, being dead, but he succeeds in giving Louise some hope that she doesn’t have to be a failure just because he was, and reasserts to Julie that he loves her. The starkeepers indicate his mission was a success, and he is presumably admitted into heaven.

Thoughts

I have found through my study of various reviews and articles that many people seem to have very strong, knee-jerk reactions to this musical. Most of those miss the point entirely. The subject of the physical abuse in Billy and Julie’s relationship is often very sensitive and polarizing, which is somewhat understandable, but I have yet to see someone be upset about the non-stop emotional abuse that is evident in Enoch and Carrie’s relationship. For that matter, no one seems to complain about the evident emotional abuse offered by Mr. Bascombe both toward his wife and toward the workers in his mill (which I suspect was little better than a sweatshop).

I do not imply that physical abuse is alright. However, I do not think Billy and Julie had an abusive relationship. There is a difference, in my mind, between an isolated incident of violence (such as Billy hitting Julie, once) and repeated or habitual violence (Billy beating Julie would imply repetition, for example). I think it is important to Billy, for one, that it only happened once. He clearly feels awful that he hit Julie, and wishes more than anything that he could have a do-over on that one. When he slaps Louise’s hand away, I think his reaction is, “What have I done?!? Am I completely unredeemable?” Clearly Billy does not know how to handle his temper, but at least he loves and respects his wife.

It also bears mentioning that Julie and Billy may not have the best relationship ever, and that relationship has had to endure stress and conflict because of the homeless/jobless situation right from the start, but they both still respect each other at some level. There may have been an incident of physical violence, but there is next to nothing in terms of emotional abuse. Compare, for example, Billy’s songs with Julie: in “If I Loved You” as well as “You’re a Queer One,” Billy never once interrupts Julie, instead just listening to her. She only interrupts him once, and only to finish his sentence; this is an allusion to her line later, “I always knew what you were thinkin’, but you didn’t always know what I was thinkin,’ ” which was spoken on Billy’s death bed. In contrast, Enoch interrupts Carrie at every opportunity when they sing. Though they clearly love each other, he is unwilling to allow her to step out of line in the slightest fashion, and refuses to forgive her when someone takes advantage of her trusting, innocent character. Though she stops him after he mentions having four kids, clearly thinking he’s being ridiculous, we find out he eventually made her give birth to nine children. He will not let her go to bawdy shows that she clearly enjoys because it’s not “proper” for a respectable woman, and he won’t let her talk to her friends about them for the same reasons. Call me crazy, but I think their relationship is ten times more abusive.

Some others seem to think the main character, Billy Bigelow, is inherently unlikeable. I have to disagree: I find Billy to be extremely sympathetic. Here’s a guy who had a rough childhood, who has no education, doesn’t have any training, but has the charisma and the machismo to land a job drawing crowds to a carousel. He loves the job, he’s good at it, and it’s a good enough living that he doesn’t want for much. Then along comes Julie, who manages to tie strings to his heart before he’s barely even met her. His boss gets jealous and fires him for doing little more than notice her. Her boss fires her for doing nothing more than talking to him, and once the two are married, no one will hire him. Some of them may refuse to hire him because they associated him with stealing Julie away; the rest think he’s a loser who has no skills and thus won’t teach him any. The whole town looks down on him for being unemployed, for failing to be a good provider, and the one person that treats him like a friend is a sleazy sailor with crime on the mind. Then he finds out that his wife is pregnant, and he still has no way to earn any money. In desperation, he does the only thing he can think of to get money so that he might take his family away from this dead-end life and move to San Francisco to start anew: help his “friend” commit a robbery. Jigger abandons him when he needs him most, leaving Billy to take the fall, and he sees no way to save his wife and daughter from a lifetime of living with an imprisoned father. In the heat of the moment, he ends his own life, thinking that he died a failure and a criminal.

I find Billy to be an extremely humbling character. Flawed, yes; exercising poor judgment, certainly. But Billy reacts to everything the only way he knows how. He lacked good role models. He still does. What he needed was the same thing Louise needed and never got because of his death: a father figure who had gone through the same hardships. Perhaps he doesn’t fit our mold of a hero; what sort of human being does?

I think it’s much easier for people to declare Billy to be a horrible person and write him off. Instead, I challenge people to put themselves in his position before judging him. I don’t think most people could do that. Most people will never be fired from a job (not laid off, downsized, or whatever euphemism you want; I mean fired). No one in modern society would ever be fired for failing to make it home on time or because their boss got jealous; at least, if they were fired for one of those reasons, they would probably get a hefty settlement from their former employer in court. Most people can’t associate with the inability to get a job, either. I don’t mean being unemployed—almost everyone has experienced that at one time or another. I mean unable to get a job because you have no skills and have no opportunities to aquire any. I also suspect most people have no experience whatsoever with hitting anyone. I caution people reading this: don’t pigeonhole someone as an abusive mate until you have lost control of yourself at least once. Once you do, feel free to make whatever judgments you want. Most people never get to that point, and I hope for their sake that they never do.

I honestly and truly think that Carousel is one of the most enjoyable, well-written, and thought-provoking musicals ever. I agree with Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II that it was probably their best work, and I think it fitting that TIME Magazine called it the best musical of the twentieth century. I am honored that I was a part of it, and I thank our director, producer, and stage manager for trusting me (someone who has never had a true acting role before) to play the main character. I also thank the cast and crew for their hard work in making our production a reality.

Thoughts on Carousel, the Motion Picture

I write these comments about two and a half weeks after our performance, about thirty minutes after watching the movie for the first time in my life.

Not to put too fine a point on this, but I have to say that the movie version does not do the musical justice. I didn’t mind so much that they made it clear that Billy died right from the start, but I did not like the fact that Gordon McRae’s interpretation of his personality was so nonchalant. Julie, likewise, was portrayed by Shirley Jones in a very aloof manner, with none of the charm that her character was due.

I was irritated that some of the musical scenes were cut and/or done out of order. For example, “Mr. Snow Reprise” was cut entirely, so Mr. Snow simply walks out there and Carrie is not embarrassed by him at all. They also removed, completely, all signs of emotional abuse from both Mr. Snow and Mr. Bascombe, and made their characters hollow and boring besides. Jigger was just an average guy, not trying to con anyone, not taking advantage of anyone, just there. Not sleek-eyed at all, and certainly not a wharf rat.

Speaking of which, some of my favorite scenes in the musical were either cut or done in such a way that they no longer made sense. For example, the scene in which Mrs. Mullin tries to coax Billy to come back is supposed to follow immediately from Billy's talk with Jigger—the one which ends by Jigger saying Billy’s out of a job, and has a wife to support, triggering Billy’s anger and his demands for Jigger to leave his wife out of it. Jigger’s scene with Mrs. Mullin, which comes after Julie’s big news, was instead done before that, with Billy sitting right there. The whole point of the “old pleasure boat” line is to feel the hate between Mrs. Mullin and Jigger, and there was none in the movie whatsoever. They were just indifferent toward each other, with no chemistry at all.

Perhaps most disappointingly, they trimmed my favorite scenes, making them less interesting and almost ruining them. Both of them! The first is Julie’s news that she’s going to have a baby. This scene is supposed to be very emotional for both Julie and Billy: it starts with Jigger’s bringing up Billy’s insecurities about being unemployed and a bad provider, then Mrs. Mullin comes along and trying to seduce him back to the carousel, and then Julie trying to tell him her big news, but being so afraid that he’ll leave her or worse that she beats around the bush for five minutes before coming out with it. So instead of trying three times to find words, and finally saying them and bracing for impact, she just comes right out and tells him, and there is absolutely no tension between them at all. I was very disappointed.

While we are on the subject: I thoroughly did not like the lines they added at the beginning about Billy not minding living off of Nettie but just getting stir crazy. This is not his character at all! He is supposed to be depressed and frustrated by his unemployment, angry at himself for being a failure, and remorseful for hitting Julie, not just indifferent. No wonder people didn’t like this movie!

The other of my favorite scenes that they altered is the one between Jigger and Carrie. They did an alright job with that one, but they still cut out the Boston creme pie line and the entire first half of the scene. At least my favorite line survived intact (“He wasn’t carryin’ me out of the woods, he was carryin’ me into the woods!”); that’s something.

Billy’s scene with Louise was well done, right up until the point when he is supposed to be frustrated. There was no frustration at all in him. None. Zero. He slapped her hand because the script told him to slap her hand, no other reason. The actress’s reaction wasn’t perfect, but at least she looked frightened.

Several songs were cut, which very much annoyed me. “You’re a Queer One, Julie Jordan” was cut entirely, and the scene collapsed without it. Several parts of their back-and-forth before “If I Loved You” were similarly dispensed with, meaning that the song just sort of started without prompting. There was also no worry in Billy (despite Julie’s comforting of him), and no sense that he was losing his battle with his emotions either. The scene at the beginning, in which Billy spends the entire ride chatting Julie up, does not square with the version in the musical, but I suppose it could work anyway. However, there was absolutely no enjoyment in Billy when Mrs. Mullin was confronting the girls—it was as if he was reading a script, not pushing Mrs. Mullin’s buttons and enjoying every second of it. They also cut the part about her “dear, saintly departed husband, Mr. Mullin” who she “only wished [he] were alive [that] minute” (to which Billy is supposed to say, “I bet he don’t).

“Mr. Snow, Reprise” was cut entirely, so Mr. Snow never gets to properly introduced. The girls also never get to gossip about him. It also bothered me that Nettie told Carrie about Billy hitting Julie, and Julie tried to cover it up. Julie is supposed to be the one to tell her, and she is not supposed to cover it up like she is a stereotype abuse victim—she is supposed to be a supportive wife who realizes that her husband made a mistake, even if it was a bad one, and be open and honest about the situation to her friend.

They also cut out all the fun parts of “When the Children Are Asleep”; there is now no part about Enoch’s runaway ambition, nothing about Carrie thinking he is nuts for implying they will have at least four children, etc. In fact, all the parts before the duet begins are gone! What a gyp. And what’s more, they cut “Blow High, Blow Low!” entirely, and many of the scenes that are supposed to take place after it now take place before it! They also cut Billy’s big angry song, “Highest Judge of All,” and I did not particularly care for the full-out, too-loud singing that Jones did for “What’s the Use of Wond’drin’ ” either. That is supposed to be a very touching song, not an opportunity to show off.

Much as I hate to insult professional actors and professional directors, I think this movie would have been better off not made. The musical in stage form makes you think, but the movie just makes you confused. Why does Billy get fired, and why doesn’t he care? Why does Jigger act like such a nice guy? Why does Jigger seem so uncaring that he just got 21 for the third time in four hands? He should just wear a shirt that says, “I am cheating”; it would be less obvious. Why does Mrs. Mullin suddenly seem to love Billy now that he is dead? And why does Billy get blamed for leaving his wife and daughter alone when his death was an accident? Answer: it wasn’t supposed to be an accident, but they forgot to change the lines about it being his fault when they changed the way he died! They also added some lines that make him out to be a sleaze, and changed some of the others that are intended to make him redeemable. Instead, we don’t really care what happens to him.

I have half a mind to encourage someone to make a real movie of this musical, with Anne directing it and starring our cast! We’d certainly have a better scene between Jigger and Mrs. Mullin with our cast, the bench scene would actually have some chemistry between the actors (and you might actually believe that Billy and Julie were falling in love during it!), and Enoch would be more of the emotionally abusive husband that he really is.

Perhaps our production had no budget, and perhaps we are not entirely professional as far as acting goes, but I really do think we did a better job in most parts of this than the people who directed the movie. The dance scenes in the movie were the only thing that impressed me. The rest was fairly forgettable.