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On Broadway

 Character and voice are everything; plot is a secondary consideration.


An example: "1943" from "Caroline, or Change." The story is simple: A woman marries an inadequate Navy man who can't get his act together after WWII. He becomes a drunk; he tries to work for the ammonia factory, but the union excludes Black men. Later, there is domestic abuse. He abandons his family.

As Caroline relives this story, we overhear her prayer:

God whose eye is on the sparrow--
Please make Emmie go to bed.
Folk will stare tomorrow;
Jesus, please fix up my swollen head.
Please: a job, so he stops drinking.
Please.....he don't like digging sewers....

We see Caroline's hopelessness and her ferocity; as she begins to imagine a better situation for herself, the melody speeds up. Caroline will give orders; she will tell God what to do.

Please give me a mop and bucket.
Please: a white-folks'-house to tend.
Please: some money. Feed the babies.
Choke his throat when he drink liquor.
Make my sis help with the babies.
Let him see: He mess with me?
After I have spent the day putting white folks' clothes away...?
Tell him, God, if he ever, ever, ever hit me again....

Kushner has a wonderful sense of specificity: the ammonia factory, the sewers, the mop and bucket, the clothing in the washing machine. Also, syntax does interesting work here. Caroline has a feisty imagination, but when her thoughts stray to domestic abuse, she can't finish the sentence. And yet we know what happens at the end of that sentence; we can finish the line.

It seems so odd to me that Kushner hasn't returned to the musical theater--even in his daydreams, as far as I know--since "Caroline" made its first trip to Broadway. (Yes, he contributed to Spielberg's "West Side Story," but that wasn't a work for the theater.)

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