Since this musical has book and lyrics by Tony Kushner – serving a rich score by Jeanine Tesori – it is tempting to look for parallels with Angels in America. Although written much later, in 2003, it has the same wary optimism and ability to wrest public metaphors from private experience. As when it was staged by the National in 2006, the show also palpably works on an audience and produced the most full-throated ovation I’ve ever heard in the Minerva.
Set in Louisiana in 1963, the story starts from the relationship between a young Jewish boy, Noah, and his family’s black maid, Caroline. When Noah is encouraged to leave the small change in his pockets as a gift for the underpaid maid, not only is Caroline insulted but the gesture opens up the racial, social and economic divisions of 60s America. The word “change” takes on multiple meanings that are dramatically exposed in a scene where black servants cook the Jewish family’s meal at Hannukah and where there is a big showdown between Noah’s revolutionary grandfather and Caroline’s militant daughter.
Tesori uses klezmer music in that scene but elsewhere her abundant score embraces everything from Tamla Motown trios to classical clarinet solos and a climactic, soul- baring number for Caroline. That last is beautifully delivered by the incomparable Sharon D Clarke who, even in her silences, conveys the implacable, obdurate and deeply pious nature of the exploited maid. Abiona Omonua as her angry daughter, Charlie Gallacher as the lonely Noah, Lauren Ward as his casually patronising stepmother and Teddy Kempner as a bluff Marxist oldster are all excellent.
Michael Longhurst’s production has a miraculous fluidity and wittily shows the cast personifying inanimate objects such as washing machines, electric dryers and radios. There were moments when I wished the pulsating, through-composed score gave us rest points, but this is a radically pioneering musical: one that expands the form to show America at a time when, in the wake of the death of Kennedy, there was both a sense of collective trauma and a hunger for change.
- At Minerva, Chichester, until 3 June. Box office: 01243 781312.
