"Caroline, or Change" -- The Magnificent Mammy
MN Spokesman-Recorder
So, this is how we honor the death of 14-year-old Emmet Till, savagely beaten, an eye gouged out, before he was shot through the head and thrown into the Tallahatchie River with a 70-pound cotton gin fan tied to his body with barbed wire – for the youthful mischief of whistling at white woman. This is how we respect the memory of activist Medgar Evers, shot in the back walking up the driveway to come home to his wife and three children. This is how we honor four Birmingham, Alabama girls who, while worshiping at church, were bombed into the next life by the Ku Klux Klan. A generation fought for civil rights, struggled to be treated like human beings, refused to be denied education and the right to vote with the brave and the innocent dying cruel deaths. It is honored as the backdrop for some privileged playwright entertaining audiences with his ersatz saga at the Guthrie Theater, Caroline, or Change, which may as well have been titled The Magnificent Mammy.
Caroline Thibodeaux, a Southern Jewish family’s maid, is the lead character in this plotless fluff by Tony Kushner (book and lyrics) that barely stops short of amounting to a contemporary coonshow. Right off the bat, singing as she washes and dries clothes in the basement, Caroline is accompanied by, of all things, an animated, spiritedly singing washer, dryer (cloned from Teen Angel in Dreamgirls) and radio. Bad enough, but the radio is represented by three women in snug, hot pink, shake-and-shimmy dresses, rolling their hips, jutting out their butts – every time they perform a number. It’s not the least bit surprising when we learn how Caroline came to be a single mom. She had to get a divorce because – okay, everybody say – her husband, what else, drank like a fish and beat her like she was Job’s mule. The requisite, cliché heartwarming tug comes with Caroline having befriended the family’s young son, helping the grade-schooler sneak a smoke and thereby standing as his rock of Gibraltar. Naturally, the closest thing she has to a worthwhile black man is daydreaming of Nat King Cole.
This romanticized stereotype debases the heart and soul that kept maids and laundry women getting up each day to work their hands raw looking after their families (many of which actually included husbands who never raised a hand to them, whether they drank or not). These mothers and wives dealing with day-in, day-out drudgery were about a great deal more than this script’s dilemma of whether Caroline was given whatever change was left in the absent-minded kid’s pants pockets. It’s a galling insult that the climax arrives with our heretofore honorably heroine turning petty enough to appropriate a $20-bill from the child’s pants, argue with him over it, give it back and, then, walk off the job in a self-righteous huff, depriving her family of a living because of a spat with a little boy. Don’t worry, though, the ace up Kushner’s sleeve is that, after Caroline goes to church, we get to speculate that God intervened and got her job back for her (there’s no other way to explain the happily-ever-after-ending). One more slap in the face comes with the closing number’s smarmy bilge about succeeding generations being “children of Caroline Thibodeaux”.
The Ordway Center had The Color Purple this season, so, artistic director Joe Dowling had to have The Guthrie Theater step up with its own Lawd-them-coloreds-sure-can-sing production. In fact, sing they do, a phenomenally gifted cast (the white performers acquit themselves admirably as well) doing Janine Tesori’s splendid music fine justice. It’s just a shame Kushner’s there, palming off a slick, bald-faced travesty as homage to an era’s valiant women who stood as a cornerstone in black communities during a tragic time.
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