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definition of a classic work is that it changes meaning. It's only worth restating a classic if it has changed since the last time it was done. There's no point in doing it if it's the same show.
"The impulse to do Carousel was not to do it in the context of the commercial West End musical theatre; it was done at the National the same way it's done here--in the much more challenging context of what's best in the whole world repertoire. That's a little mission of mine. Carousel was done to show snob British audiences that the great American musicals should be on the stages of the National along with the great British and the great European classics."
The trick to a revelatory Carousel, Hytner believes, is always to cast the actor before the singer. "That's what's exciting for me--when you put that caliber of artist in a musical play of this quality. These shows are so often cast with handsome people with voices--that's why the shows seem shallow. No one in our show short-changes the audience vocally, and it still works."
His quest for the best acted of Carousels has been a global obsession, so it's ironic he winds up with a couple of Broadway debuters who came from Juilliard, a good block from the Beaumont: Michael Hayden (Class of '92) is the show's Billy Bigelow, a combustible mix of violence and vulnerability, and its mother-earth figure, Nettie Fowler, is played by Shirley Verrett (Class of '61), the mezzo-soprano who normally works another 100 yards from Juilliard--at The Met. But the most recent Juilliard graduate is Audra Ann McDonald (Class of '93), who pertly plays the heroine's best pal, Carrie Pipperidge.
In the case of Hayden's short stroll from Juilliard unknown to Beaumont star, you have to figure in his 6,000-mile round trip to London where he began his Oliver Award-nominated performance of Bigelow. The part that got him the star spot on Carousel couldn't be more removed from Hayden's own clean-cut, all-American good looks. During his last months at Julliard, he shaved his head, applied prosthetic make-up and originated the role that last year won Ron Leibman a Tony: Roy Cohn in a student production of Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning Angels in America--hardly the proper calling card for Billy Bigelow, and therein lies an extremely convoluted tale.
"When I was doing that show, I got tickets for a friend of mine, and he brought Vinny Liff, who was then casting Carousel and, of course, didn't think for a second I'd be right for Billy. But a girl in my class going out for Mrs. Mullin urged him to see me, so he called my agent and set up an audition. I sang and read for him, and he was taken aback that I knew the music by heart. I'd done the role. It was the first role I ever did in my life--in the ninth grade--so I knew it. I went in the next day for Nick and a bunch of National Theatre biggies. Everybody was a bit nervous because nobody knew who I was, but they gave me the role anyway."
This bizarre route to Billy Bigelow pleases Hayden. "Ralph Richardson did Lear when he was 25. Gielgud and Olivier also were doing, at very young ages, amazing roles they had no business doing--they said so later in their autobiographies--but, in America, we're too much into types. Because of how I look, people say, 'Oh, he'll play young-male-lead parts.' But I have no agenda to play only that. I'd quite like to play Macbeth--things I have no business playing--because that's what actors do. Some can, some can't. I believe I can. Hopefully, I'll get more opportunities to do even better parts."
Similarly, Sally Murphy's most famous

With Carousel, director Nicholas Hytner's mission was to show British audiences that the great American musicals deserved to be on the same stages of the National Theatre as the great British and European classics

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We Put Out Passengers In The Driver's Seat.
Most luxury cars give the driver a very sophisticated seat that adjusts to the body for maximum comfort and support. Passenger comfort and support. Passenger comfort, on the other hand, tends to take a back seat.
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To accommodate your friends more, you'd have to give them the wheel. But you don't want them to have all the fun, do you?
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