You just enumerated the many, many complaints and disappointments I felt at Carousel this week. Although, like you, I wouldn’t say I hated the show, I didn’t really enjoy it either. There was some good singing, some good dancing, and once in awhile, some good acting, but the show didn’t come together as an emotional event for me.
I also felt there was no sexual attraction between Julie & Billy. And once that is absent, the rest of their interactions don’t make sense. It’s hard for me to believe I felt this way, but Joshua Henry was simply not charming enough and Jesse Mueller barely registered at all, except for seeming dutiful and introspective. So instead of being a tragic pair, doomed to play out their explosive attraction by relentlessly hurting one another, they were just dull.
The design choice that did me in was that the one & only carousel horse we got to see was way over on the side of the stage and it just sat there. All that glorious music sweeping us along to the magic of ... one static horse. |
