Still, few have dared to tell as many such stories as “Caroline, or Change” does.
That was true when it premiered at the Public Theater in 2003 and feels truer now in the electrifying Broadway revival that opened on Wednesday at Studio 54.
But the world around “Caroline” has changed in ways that make it seem more prescient, more painful and — despite a performance of tragic grandeur in the title role by Sharon D Clarke — more hopeful now than it did back then.
Cleaning, doing laundry and minding 8-year-old Noah after school, she earns $30 a week; on that paltry salary, lacking the help of her absent husband, she must sustain her children.
As the leading character in a musical, Caroline is unique: Titanically dour, she seeks to repel all sympathy her circumstances might invite.
Despite their twinned sadnesses, Noah’s love thaws Caroline only to the point of allowing him to light her daily cigarette.
The equilibrium of this precarious system is carefully set up in the opening scenes, as is the musical’s stylistic daring.
Caroline’s imperviousness at first tips the balance of the show’s sympathy toward Noah, whose fantasy of being centrally important in her life is excused by his youth and his grief.
Recently married to Noah’s feckless father, and trying to assert authority in the awkward situation, she imposes a new rule: Caroline should keep any change she finds in Noah’s dirty clothes.
This being a musical, the music is part of that; Tesori’s wondrous score is like the search function on a car radio, picking up snippets of every genre on the dial.
Those ideas start small.
And Noah’s fantasies, which at first seem merely sweet, soon grow ridiculous and grandiose.
Caroline does, if no longer as a pitiful boy then as an ethical dilemma, an heir to the exploitative ways of even liberal whites.
Longhurst best dramatizes the oncoming collision in his acute staging of the Gellmans’ Hanukkah dinner.
Meanwhile we see Caroline, her friend, Dotty , and Emmie hustling to prepare and serve the holiday meal as they circumnavigate the Gellmans on a turntable.
If this is an admirable insight from white authors, keep in mind that the musical was strongly shaped by Black artists as well, among them the original director, George C.
Now Clarke, who won an Olivier award for her performance in the British production, adds hers.
The result of that restraint is more painful than cathartic, leaving the story’s emotional release to those who can afford it: Caroline’s children.