WASHINGTON — Their names have become synonymous with beloved musicals, from “Oklahoma!” to “South Pacific,” “The King and I” to “The Sound of Music.”
But which show did Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein consider their personal favorite?
Behold, “Carousel,” which is currently rocking Arena Stage now through Dec. 24 in Southwest D.C.
“They were following up this huge hit of ‘Oklahoma,’ a phenomenal success,” star Nicholas Rodriguez told WTOP. “It was [receiving] a lot of strife out of town, and at one point, Richard Rodgers just said, ‘We’re proud of the work we’ve done.’ … That’s pretty cool for us artists to remember: We don’t always have to top our previous successes. It’s about being proud of the work we’re doing right now.”
Based on the 1909 Hungarian play “Liliom” by Ferenc Molnár, the 1945 Broadway musical “Carousel” was only the second production by Rodgers & Hammerstein. It follows Julie Jordan (Betsy Morgan), who falls in love with bad boy Billy Bigelow (Rodriguez), a carnival barker whose rebellious ways will lead to tragedy. But thanks to a little magical fantasy, Billy has a second chance to set things right.
“It’s the classic boy meets girl story with a twist,” Rodriguez said. “We see what happens to them in the future and then what happens even later down the line when they have children. It deals a lot with redemption and hope. Even if two people are truly in love, there can be problems along the way. How do you fix that and redeem it? … It deals with the afterlife and do you believe in that and what happens when we pass on. Are we good enough to get up there? Or do we have to stay down below?”
On the surface, the two leads seem like opposite personalities: one quiet, one brash.
“My Julie is incredibly strong and intelligent in a way that she’s smart enough to know when to speak and when to keep things to herself,” Morgan said. “They say in the show that she’s ‘quieter and deeper than a well,’ and I hold that with me throughout the entire show. I think she feels things very deeply.”
Still, her co-star insists their characters have a lot in common, seeing Billy’s cockiness as bluster.
“Everybody always says he’s the classic bad boy,” Rodriguez said. “That’s the veneer, what’s on the outside. Billy’s one of these braggadocios showmen. … He’s the first person to tell you he can get anything he wants and deserves it all. But at his core, his internal struggle is that he doesn’t really believe it. So when he meets Julie, something as simple as being in love, he can get all the girls he wants, but he didn’t know he could have all the feelings, too. … It’s interesting watching him struggle.”
While the show marks Rodriguez’s reunion with director Molly Smith and choreographer Parker Esse from Arena’s 2011 production of “Oklahoma,” it’s a different full-circle homecoming for Morgan.
“My very first show I ever did was a production of ‘Carousel’ that happened at the [local] high school,” Morgan said. “I was one of the Snow Children. I was maybe 8 or 9 and I have little memory of it.”
Aside from that formative experience, Morgan has still never seen “Carousel,” neither the 1956 film starring Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones, nor any of the many stage productions over the years.
“I’ve actually never seen ‘Carousel’ in any capacity,” Morgan said. “When I went in for the show, the director Molly Smith said to me, ‘You don’t have a history with this, do you?’ She said that I came in and it was different from what she had seen in the past. It wasn’t on purpose necessarily, but I had no reference point. All I knew was what I was reading on the page and my reaction to that.”
Conversely, Rodriguez has seen the movie several times.
“I remember watching the movie as a kid,” Rodriguez said. “I was always a fan of these big movie musicals growing up, and it’s interesting re-watching it as an adult and just seeing how different it is. … How Rodgers & Hammerstein chose to rewrite certain things for [1950s] Hollywood audiences. There’s certain things, if people only know the movie, that are actually very different in the play.”
While certain story elements are closer to the original, expect the same songs you know and love.
“They took this beautiful story and they wrote this incredible music,” Morgan said. “I think part of the reason it was their favorite was because the music was so extraordinary.”
Most famous in the songbook are musical numbers like “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” “June Is Bustin’ Out all Over” and “If I Loved You,” which boasts a unique longevity in its stage presentation.
“It’s this extensive scene that goes on for 20-something pages,” Morgan said. “It is an incredibly long scene that has all the parts of the song woven into it. It is one of the most brilliant pieces of writing I’ve ever had the pleasure to perform on stage. … You get to see them both discover each other and discover themselves as well. At the end of the scene essentially is when Billy sings his portion of ‘If I Loved You,’ and you see somebody toying with ‘what could be’ in a way that is completely gorgeous.”
Indeed, “If I Loved You” has been covered by many artists: Perry Como, Julie Andrews, Bing Crosby, Sammy Davis Jr., Art Garfunkel, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand and Dinah Washington.
“It’s been a jazz standard, it’s been a pop standard, it’s been recorded,” Rodriguez said. “But then once people see it in the context of the show, you’re able to see it through a different lens and really focus … on the ‘if’ part of ‘If I Loved You.’ So often we hear it in the pop lexicon and it’s the ‘love’ part of it.”
Aside from the more famous show tunes, both lead actors have their own favorite hidden gems.
“I’ve always had a favorite and it’s not the ones that people [hail],” Rodriguez said. “My all-time favorite song in the show is ‘What’s the Use of Wond’rin’ that she sings. … I’ve always loved the theme of it and the simplicity of it. … It’s something I can relate to. It’s simple, pure, innocent, raw.”
“‘When the Children Are Asleep!’ I love it,'” Morgan added. “I just think it’s beautiful. It’s this little song that Mr. and Mrs. Snow sing, and it talks about the quiet time when the children go to sleep. And to see the two people who are playing the part — Kurt Boehm and Kate Rockwell — they’re just so charming together and you see them dreaming up this life in their future. I just find it so charming!”
When you’re not tapping to the tunes, take a minute to admire the “complex simplicity” of the set.
“It’s the largest set I’ve seen on Fichandler [Stage],” Rodriguez said. “It’s multi-layered, playing with a heaven and a hell and on earth. Molly’s concept is that on any given day, we’re in any of those places. … It’s expansive in that it’s so huge and we have an orchestra on stage with us … But within that, there’s not a lot of furniture, not a lot of moving parts, we keep it simple within this architecture.”
Not only does Molly Smith bring clever visuals, she has earned a reputation of working with actors.
“I’ve been wanting to work with Molly for 15 years now,” Morgan admitted. “I read some article in some magazine about her years ago and immediately thought to myself, ‘This is a woman I want to be in a room with.’ Not only does she approach women in a way that I relate to and I want to get as much as I can from her in that respect, but also she has this amazing ability to create a community.”
That community is built from the earliest rehearsals where the entire cast gets to know each other.
“We spent the first week of rehearsals exploring the ins and outs of the show,” Morgan said. “A lot of times when you do what we call ‘table work’ … it’s very focused on whomever’s in the scene at that moment. [But Molly] does table work with everyone involved. We created this community … and it creates a level to this town that we’re living in that’s incredibly unique and specific.”
The result hopes to resonate as much with contemporary audiences as it did on Broadway in 1945.
“It’s just this piece that rings true for so many people,” Morgan said. “Even today, we put relationships on this unrealistic pedestal. It doesn’t matter how much in love you are, there are problems and it’s not easy. There are ups and downs. Especially when this was produced, there was a very picturesque ideal of what marriage was, and this show is not that. It’s these two people who are clearly very much in love … yet we see the ways in which they’re different and how that challenges them.”
Whether you’ve seen it before or not, there’s plenty to cherish in this version at Arena Stage.
“It is a classic piece of musical theater and you’re gonna see it in a way that’s hopefully new and exciting,” Morgan said. “Come out if you love it, because you’re gonna hopefully see a beautiful interpretation of what you already love. Or come out if you don’t know it, because it is this essential part of the musical theater canon that people should be able to see up on stage. It’s just gorgeous.”
Listen and watch the full conversation with Nicholas Rodriguez and Betsy Morgan below:
