In temperament, this impeccably performed show, which opened last night at the Public Theater under the direction of George C. Wolfe, is much like its title character, a black maid for a Jewish family in Louisiana in 1963. Played with commanding self-containment by Tonya Pinkins, Caroline Thibodeaux is a stoical, uncompromising woman. As a worker and mother, she conscientiously does her duty. But she is equally conscientious in refusing to unbend, to truckle or paste on an insincere smile. That she has the courage of her convictions is what keeps her from falling apart. It is also what keeps her from finding emotional freedom. She is, as the show's lyrics have it, "the queen of keep-at-bay." A similar strain of self-denial runs through this latest offering from Mr. Kushner, the prodigiously talented dramatist whose award-wreathed "Angels in America" has been adapted as a movie for HBO, with a premiere on Sunday. As directed by Mr. Wolfe, who staged "Angels" on Broadway, "Caroline" steadfastly resists easy opportunities to work its audience into a lather.

The show deals with, among other things, the relationship between a weary black housekeeper and a motherless white boy; the growing civil rights movement; and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy — subjects traditionally guaranteed to push New York theatergoers' mist-up buttons.

Yet Ms. Tesori's deliberately fragmented sung-through score avoids the usual anthems of uplift and self-empowerment, while Mr. Kushner's libretto refuses to sentimentalize or exalt its heroine. The tone throughout is of even-handed, slightly distanced compassion, as people of different classes are revealed as pawns of a corrupting economic structure.

Though "Caroline" has a first-rate cast, including Veanne Cox and a refreshingly direct child actor named Harrison Chad, you may find you appreciate the show more in retrospect than while you're watching it. In ambition and achievement, "Caroline" handily tops any new musical this fall. (I am not including "Avenue Q," which opened in the summer.) But in truth, it is almost too good to be good.

"Caroline" might be regarded as the brooding person's "Hairspray," the Broadway hit that also considers integration in the early 1960's. In "Hairspray," no social ill is so vicious that it can't be worked out in an "American Bandstand"-style dance-a-thon. It is a point of honor that the change suggested in the title of Mr. Kushner's musical is incremental and incomplete. Song in "Caroline" reflects troubling thoughts; it does not purge them.

Tellingly, both productions feature Supremes-like trios who pop up as figures of fantasy. In "Hairspray," these sleek singers advise that a girl just needs a new dress to outfox the blues. In "Caroline," the vocalists (played by Tracy Nicole Chapman, Marva Hicks and Ramona Keller) look just as glamorous and sing as seductively, but in — shall we say? — a more minor key. "Melt the hairspray in your hair," they croon in the radio of Caroline's mind as she does laundry. "Turn it on, turn on despair."

In structure, "Caroline" evokes American short stories of four and five decades ago, written by masters like William Maxwell and Peter Taylor — tales hazy with retrospective guilt, in which a white child of privilege unwittingly betrays someone he loves from another class.

In "Caroline," this relationship is reincarnated by 9-year-old Noah Gellman (Mr. Chad) — whose mother recently died of cancer and whose clarinet-playing father (David Costabile) is unreachably remote — and Caroline, the family maid. Mr. Kushner widens the story's social focus to create a Marxist economics lesson.

The root of the plot is money, part of the punning "change" of the title. Noah's habit of leaving coins in his pants pockets annoys Rose (Ms. Cox), his new stepmother, who declares that Caroline can keep whatever money she finds in the laundry.

The ensuing domestic crisis, built to by painstaking degrees, becomes a whispered echo of larger currents of social change roiling the South. And the production makes it clear that everyone in Caroline's world is warped by an awareness of money, from her three luxury-hungry children (Anika Noni Rose, Kevin Ricardo Tate and Marcus Carl Franklin) to Rose's old-style socialist father (Larry Keith).

Not that "Caroline" is all textbook realism. The show also features a whimsical assortment of anthropomorphic creatures, reminders that Mr. Kushner recently collaborated on a book with that immortal of children's literature, Maurice Sendak. These include a singing washing machine (Capathia Jenkins), dryer (Chuck Cooper) and radio (those Supremes-like gals) to articulate Caroline's unspoken desires and resentments.

A mournful bus (Mr. Cooper) shows up to announce the death of President Kennedy. And most spectacularly — and intrusively — there's the Moon (Adriane Lenox), who looks like Josephine Baker via Maxfield Parrish and floats onstage to comment on the changeable nature of change.

This blend of reality and annotative fantasy is rigorously, sometimes cumbersomely carried through in the set (Riccardo Hernández), lighting (Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer) and costumes (Paul Tazewell). The set, which often places images of domestic affluence and poverty in counterpoint, also underscores the show's sense of distance, as Mr. Wolfe struggles to balance the panoramic with the personal.

Ms. Tesori's postmodern collage of a score, which quotes everything from Motown to Mozart, is excellent in capturing the swirl and disjunction of patterns of thought. (She makes especially witty use of Christmas and Hannukah music.) But there's an outsider's perspective to much of "Caroline," as if its characters were, above all, pieces of historical evidence to be assessed.

As the author of "Angels" and "Homebody/Kabul," Mr. Kushner is an opulent writer whose prose ravishes and dizzies. As a lyricist, he is more efficient and calculated. Slyly eliciting different meanings from words like underground, flat and, yes, change, he proves that you don't need a fancy vocabulary to create intellectually complex effects.

But he spends too much time explaining his characters, via story-of-my-life arias and bald declarations, when it would be preferable to let us discover them on our own. The cast — which also includes Alice Playten and Reathel Bean as Noah's grandparents and Chandra Wilson as Caroline's skeptical friend — is not to be faulted.

They all, including the usually flamboyant Ms. Cox, turn in intelligently measured performances that never beg for affection or attention. And as Caroline's teenage daughter, a harbinger of a new era in politics, Ms. Rose is lovely, providing an appropriate and welcome suggestion of a more fully lived life.

A Tony Award winner for "Jelly's Last Jam," Ms. Pinkins has never been better than she is here, in an intense, controlled performance that somehow always hints at the currents of rage and helplessness beneath Caroline's rigid dignity. Even when confessing her weaknesses to God, she remains formidable. You can see why Noah would idolize her. And Ms. Pinkins and Mr. Chad expertly convey their characters' bond as outsiders without even skirting mawkishness.

Their scenes together would benefit from being expanded, though, with more than the synoptic detail that exists now. (She lets him light her daily cigarette.) As it is, you clearly and soberly see their places in the judiciously arranged social canvas of "Caroline." But the show would have so much more power and pain if these ambivalent friends claimed the foreground for themselves.

CAROLINE, OR CHANGE

Book and lyrics by Tony Kushner; music by Jeanine Tesori; directed by George C. Wolfe; sets by Riccardo Hernández; costumes by Paul Tazewell; lighting by Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer; sound by Jon Weston; hair design by Jeffrey Frank; orchestrations, Rick Bassett, Joseph Joubert and Buryl Red; music supervisor, Kimberly Grigsby; music director and conductor, Linda Twine; choreography by Hope Clarke; production stage manager, Rick Steiger; managing director, Michael Hurst. Presented by the Public Theater, Mr. Wolfe, producer; Mara Manus, executive director. At the Newman Theater in the Joseph Papp Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, East Village.

WITH: Tonya Pinkins (Caroline Thibodeaux); Capathia Jenkins (the Washing Machine); Harrison Chad (Noah Gellman); Chuck Cooper (the Dryer, the Bus); Tracy Nicole Chapman, Marva Hicks and Ramona Keller (the Radio); Alice Playten (Grandma Gellman); Reathel Bean (Grandpa Gellman); Veanne Cox (Rose Stopnick Gellman); David Costabile (Stuart Gellman); Anika Noni Rose (Emmie); Kevin Ricardo Tate (Jackie); Marcus Carl Franklin (Joe); Larry Keith (Mr. Stopnick); Adriane Lenox (the Moon); Chandra Wilson (Dotty Moffett).

The New York Times
Diciembre - 2003