Carousel

History

When Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II
began work on Carousel, they feared that critics would compare it to Oklahoma!, their highly successful musical adaptation of Lynn Rigg’s play Green Grow the Lilacs. For their second work, Rodgers remembers that, “The idea originated with Terry Helburn and Lawrence Langner, [co-directors of the Theatre Guild]. In 1921 the Theatre Guild had produced a play called Liliom by the Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnár. Simply put, Terry Helburn and Lawrence Langner felt that Oscar and I could do for Liliom what we had already done for Green Grow the Lilacs.”

Initially, Molnár refused to give Rodgers and Hammerstein permission to use his play; Molnár had previously denied several other requests to set Liliom to music, including one from Giacomo Puccini. Rodgers and Hammerstein invited Molnár to a performance of Oklahoma!, which he thought so “charming and tasteful” that he decided to grant them the rights to adapt Liliom.

Despite the novel’s international popularity and critical acclaim, Rodgers and Hammerstein were concerned about the success of Liliom as a musical. They referred to Liliom’s pessimistic ending as “the tunnel in the story through which we could see no light at the end.” They decided to give their musical a less heartbreaking ending in order to lift the spirits of American audiences, who turned to musicals as an escape from the tragedies of World War II. Anxious for the author’s reaction to their alterations, Rodgers and Hammerstein were pleasantly surprised that upon seeing Carousel, Molnár exclaimed, “What you have done is so beautiful. And you know what I like best? The ending!” Carousel was the personal favorite of Rodgers and Hammerstein and is widely regarded as their most artistically original and poignant work.

Setting

For Rodgers and Hammerstein, the most difficult aspect of transforming Liliom into an American musical was finding an appropriate setting. After nine months of deliberation, they decided to move the setting from turn-of-the-century Budapest to late nineteenth-century Maine in order to best capture the wistfulness and melancholy of Molnár’s original play for an American audience. An understanding of the everyday struggles of life on the Maine coast lends the world of Carousel a complex and subtle richness.

Maine had its economic foundations in the fishing industry, a grueling and often dangerous enterprise. The intensive labor and perilous conditions fishermen endure are often glossed over in favor of a romantic portrayal of coastal living and sailing the high seas in many productions of Carousel. The Maine landscape is marked by the miles of rivers that powered its many textile mills. The women of Carousel, if not occupied by duties as a fisherwife, often took work in textile factories for wages averaging $2.25 a week and meager room and board. Mill girls were considered to be among the lowest caste of workers and were forced to endure long hours in factories clouded with dust and the constant buzzing noise of dangerous equipment. In fact, mill girls like Julie Jordan who would “gaze absent-minded at the roof,” risked losing limbs, hair, and even their scalps to such crude machinery. Factory owners such as Carousel’s Mr. Bascombe oversaw their employees like stern fathers since mill girls were often without family, imposing dress codes, curfews, and other strict rules.

Even characters like Mr. Bascombe, who escape the misery of hard labor, still must endure the harsh Maine landscape. The relatively mild weather of June is a respite between the bitter cold of winter and the heat of August. In Carousel, the joy this relief elicits can be expressed only through song and movement, when repressed emotions and desires come “bustin’ out all over.”

-Stephen Raskauskas , Production Dramaturg