Caroline

This play had a good ending. I loved it. The rest was great as well, but this ending...
Everything I've seen lately has disappointed me with its ending. I Love You, Man, despite y dad's protests, had exactly the ending everyone expected; "Tape" fell totally flat when Amy walked out and the scene faded black - no one learned anything, everyone was just as confused as they started, no one accepted anything about themselves, it just petered off.
This..."Caroline, or Change" had a wonderful resolution. We got the conflict, we got the sorrow and hope and loss and confusion and chaos. And then we got just enough of a turnaround at the end that there was, feasibly, a happier future than that moment, though not necessarily. It was a GOOD ending. That made me really happy.
The play is about a woman named Caroline, a black 39-year-old divorcee with four children, who cooks and cleans and does laundry for a white lower-middle class family in Louisiana, 1963. Their son, Noah, always leaves his spare change in his pants pockets. That's the general premace of the show.
I was also surprised to find that this was a really intense kind of musical, in that virtually everything was sung. Not everything was a song - no, nothing was a singular song. Everything was sung. It felt more continuous that way, like the empty space was filled, the way it is in life, where silence isn't always so...y.a.w.n.i.n.g. Also, all the singers were magnificent.
Something really interesting they did with the play was - there were actually characters that played inanimate objects. One woman was the washer, a man (with a mind-blowing operatic voice) played both the dryer and the bus, another woman wearing a beautiful costume acted as the moon, and three singers played the radio (and in essence the music coming from it). Also, the relationships between all the characters were very well-portrayed, and I really liked the younger actors. Also, the set was done fantastically. It had some really great, important details that made the scene come to life.
Though some of the themes and thoughts behind this play are a little muddle, to me, I still loved it, and recommend it to anyone...at all...ever. ^_^
-Ginger