Patricia Garry

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Review: Caroline, or Change

November 10, 2007 By pgarry

A yummy production by one of our newest theater companies, Caroline, or Change features probably my favorite female actor in Cincinnati. Even though she hasn’t performed here in maybe 3 years.

Taylore Mahogany Scott plays Caroline, the African American maid of the Gelman family in Louisiana in 1963. Scott is actually young and gorgeous – but as Caroline she is exhausted, overwhelmed, grindingly poor with 4 children, and spends her days with her washer, dryer and iron in the Gelman basement. And a backup group of 3 singers, ala The Supremes (one of them also plays The Moon).

Young Noah Gelman lost his mother to cancer, and now has a New York stepmother, which allows his clarinet-playing father to retreat even further from the world.

The staging is superb, the action is nearly non-stop, especially in the beginning, all the pieces tie and re-tie into one another. And then JFK is murdered in Dallas, and even the bus driver is dazed and in mourning.

Keep in mind that this is a musical! And you’ll love the music.

The play runs into November 18. Get yourself down to Over-the-Rhine and see it. New Stage Collective is right where 12th Street deadends into Main Street. A unique theater and stage area, even for quirky Cincinnati.

Filed Under: Reviews: Books, Plays, Events, Etc.

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