Cast in order of appearance

One could speculate as to why what many people consider to be Rodgers and Hammerstein’s best musical, Carousel,  has never had a large-scale production in London since it was first seen at Drury Lane in the early fifties. Certainly it is one of the musicals that has stayed in my mind for 40 years, but one can recognise that it might not have been to everybody’s taste, what with its heavy dose of sentiment, a second half that strays into the realms of mysticism and a theme which propagates old-time values of family, community and the American dream. But the National, with sponsorship support from Oracle has certainly done it proud. The opening, with the carnival gradually coming to life and the carousel taking shape before our eyes like a giant umbrella, is the most stunning piece of staging seen on the London stage this year, and Bob Crowley’s designs of clapboard houses, menacing waterfront and island picnic-ground are a delight throughout. The choreography is a testament to the vision and innovation of the late Kenneth Macmillan, exciting, sexy and full of life threatening to break into violence, with a superb pas de deux for Bonnie Moore and the former Bolshoi dancer Stanislav Tchassov. Nicholas Hytner’s whole production is a magnificent conception, conveying the presence of the sea and countryside, the spirit of a community and the dangers that might engulf it.

All the same, the sentimentality does occasionally lie heavy on the stomach, especially towards the end when Billy Bigelow, dead as the result of a robbery that went wrong, is given the chance by the Starkeeper, guardian of the ante-chamber to Heaven, to return to New England for one day to see the daughter he never knew and to warn her against following the path that he took. Moving it may be, but this is unashamed manipulation of our emotions, at odds with the raw reality of what has gone before. But Carousel is unusual in that it cleverly balances good and evil, especially in the character of Billy Bigelow, who is, in a sense, both a no-good roustabout who has drifted through his young life and falls just short of being transformed from weakness to strength through the love of a good woman.

Michael Hayden, though lacking the big voice we associate with the role, gives a fine performance, with Joanna Riding hinting at the New England puritan ethics of Julie Jordan, standing by her man with courage and faith that came naturally to her kind. Pure evil is represented by the Mephistophelean cunning and eventual cowardice of Phil Daniels’ Jigger Craigin, a strikingly sinister portrayal of an outsider at odds with the goodness of Patricia Routledge’s jovial and motherly Nettie Fowler, who sings the abidingly anthemic You Never Walk Alone, Janie Dee’s charmingly innocent Carrie Pipperidge, and Clive Rowe’s expansive and funny Enoch Snow, a memorable and beautifully timed portrayal.