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JOAN MARCUS\MARC BRYAN-BROWN
[[Photograph]]
Michael Hayden's Billy Bigelow courts Sally Murphy's Julie Jordan in a scene from Carousel

was a cyclical exploration, too.

"Rodgers and Hammerstein are not done in England, so I only knew their shows from films," Hytner says. "Ten years ago, in Manchester, I saw a production of Carousel and was astonished a play was there waiting to get out. I filed that in the back of my mind, then one day got hold of Liliom. If you read them side by side, you realize how much of Liliom is taken almost unchanged into Carousel. You read Liliom with certain expectations derived from Central Europe-Molnar. Hungary. Sardonic. Budapest, which was, and still is, the biggest pickup joint in Europe-then you read Carousel, and you think it's the same play. It makes the same demand for theatrical involvement-plus that score, which makes the movie all the more a shattering travesty."
Returning to the roots of Carousel, to Liliom, has inevitably colored the show in somber shades, prompting the label makers to tag this resurrection "the dark Carousel"-a designation that has now started to grate on its re-creator.
"Aww, dark smark, it's just real," he grouses. "Everyone jumped on that 'dark' bandwagon. 'Dark?' We just do the show for what it means today. It's a show about redemption, about light, really. For the light to shine brightly, you must go down to come up. That's what's so important and moving about it. I've done dark shows, but I never did one which has traveled such an intense journey and ended up at such a positive place."
Whether you call him Hit-ner or the preferred Height-ner, either applies. As associate director of the Royal National Theatre, he's a bold reinterpreter of classics, a vigilant rethinker of other works, which could be profitably added to the National canon. Ironically, his reputation as a theatrical trailblazer is overshadowed by his single fling at a contemporary musical: Miss Saigon.
"I had a hunch Carousel was one of the great theatre works of the twentieth century, and that's why we did it. One

Hytner disagrees with those who have called his Carousel dark: "It's a show about redemption, about light..."

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