In 1963 Louisiana, a 39-year-old divorced black woman toils away in her own personal hell.
The woman is the titular hero of Tony Kushner’s musical, “Caroline or Change.” Her purgatory, the basement of 913 St. Anthony St., and her toil — a daily torrent of dirty laundry, indignation and unfulfilled dreams, courtesy of Caroline’s employers, the Gellman family.
» Venue:
Center Stage
, 700 North Calvert St., Baltimore
» When: Various times through Jan. 18
» Tickets: $10-$65
» Info.: 410-332-0033; www.centerstage.org
Caroline (E. Faye Butler) suffers from a severe case of “how the heck did I end up here?” with only a seven-cycle washer, an electric dryer and a radio for company. Danielle Lee Greaves and Milton Craig Nealy become the personification of the household appliances and are as colorful — Greaves in a dress fashioned from bits of men’s shirts and bed linens, and Nealy, a cross between the Devil and Little Richard — as the machines are mundane. The radio literally comes alive as Adrienne Muller, April Nixon and Ta’Rea Campbell conjure the 1960s spirit of the Supremes, complete with gold sparkle dresses and show-stopping voices, the latter trait shared by nearly every actor in the company.
Waiting for the bus home, the moon (Ren Woods) sings of the change that Caroline pines for, but feels unable to embrace even while social change rocks the Old South.
Change comes to Caroline, literally, in the soiled pants pockets of 8-year-old Noah Gellman (J. Bradley Bowers) whose stepmother, Rose, (Trisha Rapier) insists Caroline keep the nickels and pennies. Rose, still lost in the shadow of her husband’s late first wife, is oblivious to the indignity of her offer, while husband Stuart, a clarinetist, is oblivious to all but his music.
Everyone in this cast needs change, no one more than Caroline, who gives her sorrow and anger full expression, beautiful and terrible, in her rendition of “Lot’s Wife.”
Begging God to kill her spirit so that her prison will be more tolerable, she asks to be made a pillar of salt. And like a pillar of salt, in the all-white uniform of the perfunctory maid, she takes her place in the Gellmans’ basement in the bosom of a family that yearns to know her but never will.
