Although Richard Rodgers and Ocsar Hammerstein II had great success with other partners (Lorenz Hart and Jerome Kern respectively), when they joined forces on 1940’s ground-breaking Oklahoma!, they would write a new Broadway musical. Prior to it, nobody had written a show which truly reflected American life. With Carousel (1945), they would present a tale of small town life about and for the ordinary American. In adapting the Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnár’s Liliom (1909) to a seaside town on the east coast with its fairground, clambakes and idiomatic accents, Hammerstein’s characters and their sentiments and actions present not only a flawed hero in the central character Billy Bigelow but the many examples of the then average American. Yet it is a tale of hope not only appropriate to a population coming out of World War II but still remains very relevant to the current political situation in Canberra. Bigelow, who is offered the best things in life instead chooses gambling, chauvinism and assault, leading to his suicide. Even though he is given a second chance he cannot revert from his old ways.

Ben Mingay as Billy Bigelow. Photograph © Soda Street Productions

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