GEOFF BOTTOMS appreciates the local touch brought to a production of Dickens’s perennial classic
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Dark ride on this Carousel
WILL STONE sees a curiously downbeat production of a Broadway musical classic
LIGHT RELIEF: John Pfumojena and Christina Modestou as Enoch Snow and Carrie Pipperidge
[Johan Persson]
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production whose design and cartoonish acting overwhelms the close scrutiny of characters
SUSAN DARLINGTON enjoys the raucous familiarity of a traditional topsy-turvy pantomime
RON JACOBS introduces the latest novel by the best writer of US working-class fiction writing today
HENRY BELL is fascinated by the underlying curiosities and contradictions of one of the great poets of the Mediterranean
DAVID RENTON recommends a books that explores the ways in which disabled people are made to feel both of and not part of this world
Carousel
Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, London
TO MAKE it resonate with a modern audience, a revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1945 musical was always going to be a tall order. So it proves with this production.
Based on the 1909 play Liliom, many people simply don’t care about the explorations of marriage, women having lots of children and masculine pride in Ferenc Molnar’s work anymore.
So when meek and mild millworker Julie Jordan (Carly Bawden) falls for brutish carousel barker Billy Bigelow (Declan Bennett) and their love for each other causes them both to lose their jobs, we’re looking through what seems the lens of ancient history.
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