Sweet Sounds

The music of Caroline, or Change may tell more of the story than its words do

Comments (0) By Chloe Veltman Wednesday, Jan 26 2005

Michal Daniel

True to Life: Caroline, an embittered divorcee and mother of four, doesn't fall for a stranger or murder anyone with a hatchet.

Details

Music by Jeanine Tesori

Through Feb. 20

Tickets are $50-90

512-7770

www.bestofbroadway-sf.com

The Curran Theater at 445 Geary (between Mason and Taylor)

More About

Director George C. Wolfe couldn't have assembled a more magnificent cast to communicate Tesori's music and Kushner's words. (The performances were so engaging that I couldn't help wishing Riccardo Hernández's clunky, constantly trundling set would get stuck in the wings and leave the singing and acting to set the scene themselves.) At the center, a colossus astride an ironing board, stands Pinkins. Dressed in a matronly white maid's uniform with a scowl permanently fixed to her face, she makes an unlikely heroine. Her voice -- honeyed in the upper register, growling down below -- relates Pinkins' Caroline more closely to the great tragic heroines of opera, like Gaetano Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, than to, say, the central character of a musical, like Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita Perón.

Awards ceremonies are, as we all know, a notorious waste of time. There's little point to them besides, for the producers, the potential for future financial success and, for us spectators, a chance to glimpse the latest designer frocks. It's no surprise that Caroline, or Change -- which resists categorization -- won only one Tony (Anika Noni Rose garnered Best Actress in a Featured Role -- Musical for her feisty performance as Caroline's daughter, Emmie). But to consider it as being, in Kushner's words, "more like a play" than a musical is to downplay the melodies and harmonies that make it truly great. Perhaps the Tony committee should consider adding a category for "Best American Folk Opera" in 2005.