Change Come Fast and Change Come Slow

It's all the more remarkable because I was astonished by the show I saw on Monday. At the very last minute, I managed to get an eighth-row center seat to Caroline, or Change, which wrapped up its run at the National's Lyttleton Theatre on Thursday.

I hadn't seen a show in the Lyttleton before -- I've only been to the Cottesloe to see The Overwhelming, which was all too underwhelming. The seats at the Cottesloe are sort-of fold down bench like things which I found utterly uncomfortable. The seats at the Lyttleton, by contrast, are plush and padded, with lovely armrests in between.

The seats are a minor point, because I would have quickly forgotten my discomfort, so captivating was the production. They'd managed to bring in Tonya Pinkins as Caroline and George Wolfe to direct an otherwise British cast (as far as I can tell from the programme notes).

I am so disappointed I didn't see it sooner, because I totally would have gone again. The only real faults I can note are that the first scene does go on a bit long, but it does go a long way toward establishing the tedium of Caroline's daily routine in the Gellmans' basement (the scene wasn't tedious, just a bit long).

A bigger issue was the occasional incomprehensibility of the lyrics. Judging by crosstalk during the interval and after the show, it was a bigger problem for British people than for me (being well-seasoned with American black, Jewish, and Louisianan accents and phraseology). But it was something of a shame that Tony Kushner's poetic words weren't always understood.

I've been harsh on Kushner in the past, I have very mixed feelings about Angels in America -- particularly the second play, which I still think goes on a bit too long and overindulges in the characters. And I had stayed away from Caroline originally because I figured it would either be horribly sentimental (being based, as it is, on his relationship with his childhood maid) or else stridently bracing and hopeless in its critique of American life (a la Belize in Angels).

But I was wrong. What Kushner has done in Caroline is no less than his highest accomplishment. The boy's relationship with Caroline is insubstantial but weighted with indirect implication. Caroline herself has a difficult relationship with her teenage daughter Emmie, who turns out not to be shiftless, but instead up to her own thing.

The play (I'd call it a libretto, but there are few moments that aren't sung) is profoundly concerned with loss. The boy, Noah, has lost his mother to cancer, and his father, who has quickly remarried, has not yet recovered, losing himself in his daily clarinet practice. The loss of JFK, and the hope and promise he represented -- however flawed and incomplete -- is beautifully expressed.

Then there is the loss of Caroline herself, left behind in Lake Charles as the civil rights movement moves on without improving her lot. Caroline finally vents her frustration in a soaring, angry blues number addressed directly to God. Pinkins performed it at the Tonys, and it requires amazing range of voice and emotion. She blames herself for hoping, for expecting too much, too soon, and she wants to be set free from the rage that has resulted. The last line really stuck with me: "Don't let my sorrow / Make evil of me."

As soon as that number ends, Caroline's kids come in, Emmie and the two younger boys, dressed for church. Emmie hands Caroline her hat, and Caroline grabs her and hugs her close. It's a very powerful moment, and I knew then how the show was going to end (or at least how I hoped it would, for maximum emotional and aesthetic impact. And I was immensely delighted to find that Kushner had written this moment exactly as it appeared onstage in a stage direction in the book).

Because the show isn't just about these things, it's also about the generation gap within African American communities and families. Caroline's generation is of the 40s, all too ready to settle down with her handsome man when he's back from the war. Emmie's generation is of the 60s, when the civil rights movement of the 50s was already (by 1963) giving way to new movement less trusting of nonviolence, more given to direct (and forceful) confrontation.

Thus it was perfectly fitting at the end to have Caroline hand the stage over to Emmie, who reveals what she was really up to while her mother thought she was shiftless. And shows us that while change comes fast and changes comes slow, it does come, sooner or later, even to the most remote corners of the republic, all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico.

It's an astonishingly beautifully written play, and I mean that in terms of its language and its characters. Kushner has managed to write poor black characters who sound authentic without verging into dialect or stereotype. Rather, he's refreshingly fresh, even with small touches: Dotty, Caroline's friend, is going to night school, and dresses like a bobby-soxer, a few years behind the times and many more past her age, given she's in her 30s.

The lyrics, too, are a rich black/Jewish/Louisiana patois. Jeanine Tesori's score drives the play's roots home, with her joyously inventive mixes of blues, klezmer, and Motown. In the end, Caroline, or Change is a sad play -- the gap between Caroline and Noah will never be bridged -- but also a hopeful one, as the sun rises on Emmie. It's an essentially American play, and one that leaves me looking forward to whatever Kushner does next.