'Caroline' deftly juggles issues of race and change

For Chicago-area critics who haven't already added Court Theatre to their short list of future nominees for the regional Tony Award, I expect Charles Newell's impeccable and quite moving production of the musical "Caroline, or Change" will make them reconsider.

A capacity crowd converged on the theater Saturday for the opening of Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori's extraordinary examination of race and class.

No one coughed. No one fidgeted. Not one candy wrapper rustled.

While Newell earns kudos for his articulate, intuitive direction of this counterintuitive show, it was E. Faye Butler who held the audience rapt and then brought them to their feet. A singer whose voice shifts from a gentle caress to a stinging slap within the span of a measure, Butler is an actress incapable of sounding a false note. And her titanic performance as Caroline, a woman determined to steer clear of the changes sweeping 1960s America, ranks among the finest, most thoroughly realized work I've seen on stage this year. The praise she will undoubtedly earn is well deserved.

Sharing the acclaim is the accomplished music director Doug Peck. He further solidifies his reputation with his artful re-imagining of Tesori's remarkable score, in which a jazzy clarinet riff morphs into a sprightly Hanukkah song and a wordless lament provides counterpoint to a gospel-tinged melody.

While one trio reaches near operatic heights, another sizzles à la The Supremes. Richly varied and carefully blended, Tesori's combination of blues and Broadway-style ballads, klezmer music, playground songs, Motown and swing, is as intellectually exciting as it is emotionally satisfying.

Against this backdrop Kushner sets his challenging, defiantly unsentimental, semi-autobiographical tale about the knotty relationship between a needy Jewish boy named Noah (a guileless Malcolm Durning) and ill-humored Caroline, the family's black maid.

Set in 1963 Louisiana, the story centers around Caroline, a divorced mother of four who spends most of her time in the family's basement (a concrete hollow that dominates John Culbert's simple but evocative set) listening to the radio (Starr Busby, Barbara L.W. Myers and Donica Lynn) and battling the Washing Machine (Harriet Nzinga Plumpp) and Dryer (Byron Glen Willis).

To Noah, she's a surrogate parent, replacing the mother he lost to cancer and a distant father (a wounded Rob Lindley) too wrapped up in his own sorrow to ease his son's. To Caroline, Noah is a nuisance. Burdened by her own grief, desperate to keep her anger at bay, Caroline concentrates on the essentials: earning money to care for her family.

Enter Noah's stepmother Rose, played by Kate Fry, whose pitch-perfect performance as an earnest woman thwarted by her good intentions elicits our respect and sympathy. To stop Noah from leaving money in the pockets of his dirty clothes, she announces that Caroline can keep the money she finds. Change - the stray coins that mean so little to Noah that he forgets them and so much to the disadvantaged Caroline that she digs for them - puts an added strain on an already difficult relationship. Theirs is not the only relationship affected. Caroline's refusal to acknowledge social and political transformations taking place causes a rift between her and her longtime friend, the well-meaning Dotty (Jacqueline Williams, rock-solid as ever), a part-time college student who urges Caroline to "learn something new." Caroline's intractability also leads to conflict with her outspoken, forward-thinking daughter Emmie (a sparkling Melanie Brezill).

Also deserving mention is Dennis Kelly who plays Rose's unabashedly socialist father; the incandescent Plumpp for her vocally voluptuous turn as the Moon and Willis whose performance as the Bus announcing John F. Kennedy's assassination is a brief but moving reflection of a nation's stunned sorrow.

"Caroline, or Change"

Four stars (out of four)

Location: Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave., Chicago

Times: 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays; 8 p.m. Fridays; 3 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Sundays through Oct. 19

Running time: About 2 hours, 45 minutes with intermission

Tickets: $32-$60

Parking: Free parking in garage adjacent to theater

Box office: (773) 753-4472 or courttheatre.org

Rating: For middle school and older

<div class="infoBox"> <h1>More Coverage</h1> <div class="infoBoxContent"> <div class="infoArea"> <h2>Video</h2> <ul class="video"> <li><a href="/multimedia/?category=1&type=video&item=202">Clip from Court Theatre's 'Caroline, or Change' </a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div>