Review: (Ottawa) Carousel

Spinning for Spinning's Sake 
by Jim Murchison 
@JimMurchison

The amount of dedication that it takes to do musical theatre is remarkable. The size of the productions at Orpheus and the general quality of the shows done by people outside of their regular day jobs is usually very impressive. Having said that I was concerned that Carousel might be a little dated. It is much more than that. It is a social dinosaur. 

Carousel is a musical based on the mediocre Ferenc Molnar play Liliom. It was very popular, probably for the strength of three well crafted songs, If I Loved You, June Is Busting Out All Over and You'll Never Walk Alone. The last song is so inspirational that Jerry Lewis used to close the MD telethons for Jerry's Kids with it. The rest of the song and dance numbers are little more than filler.

There are some very fine messages in Carousel: Don't worry about what other people think of you; Stick to your path and your principles; Don't let your parent's mistakes hold you back or use them as an excuse for your own failure. 

There is another message that is so out of place that it transforms what might be a trite but somewhat entertaining escape into a jawdroppingly stupid choice to perform at any level in this millennium. When someone that loves you beats you, it doesn't hurt. To be fair, the frame of reference here is after a ghost has struck his daughter she doesn't feel it and as I am not an expert on the paranormal perhaps that is the true effect of ghostly beatings. In the real world being beaten by someone you love sometimes wears off after a couple of generations. Sometimes.