Caroline, or Change Court Theatre
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Set in Lake Charles, Louisiana, in late 1963, the show focuses on Caroline Thibodeaux, a black, illiterate, 39-year-old divorced mother of four making $30 a week as a cleaning lady. Caroline is stuck in a rut and sinking—depressed and sullen, disappointed with her life, acutely aware of her social inferiority, and angry at herself for letting things get to their current state. A churchgoing Christian who believes that God “makes everything as a test,” she seems to be a pillar of strength. But that strength comes at a cost. Afraid to give in to weakness and despair, she refuses to admit her vulnerability.
Caroline also has a regular visitor: Noah, the Gellmans’ eight-year-old son, who adores her, failing to perceive the sadness underneath her stubborn strength. Noah vastly prefers Caroline to his parents—Stuart, a clarinet player, and Rose, a transplanted New Yorker he married after Noah’s mother died of cancer.
This fable is set against a backdrop of turbulent social transition, represented by the assassination of President Kennedy—”friend to the colored, friend to the Jew,” the distraught chorus sings—and the mysterious desecration of a local memorial to Confederate soldiers. The biggest flaw in Caroline, or Change is Kushner and Tesori’s failure to fully integrate these events into the emotional fabric of the tale: since the audience never sees them, they don’t seem as important as they’re surely intended to be.
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