Pasquale and Osnes make the most of their roles, despite the limitations inherent to the script. Both leads are underwritten in Hammerstein's book – Billy is defined by little more than swaggering machismo, and Julie often seems more like a wounded deer than a multifaceted woman. The sensory opulence begins with a storytelling stunner of an overture, as a waltzing, dreamscape swirl of carnival freaks, strongmen, and burlesque dancers spin across the stage. There is plenty of pizzazz in director and choreographer Rob Ashford's sensual staging, which boasts a cast of more than 30 as well as an equally robust orchestra conducted to luxurious perfection by David Chase. Despite Billy's reputation as a thief, Julie plunges into a romance with the barker, remaining fiercely loyal to him, even as his mild belligerence turns to violence. He's quickly smitten by Julie, an innocent but strong-minded mill worker, who visits the carousel after work one day with her friend Carrie (Jenn Gambatese). The culmination of this sometimes grotesque but always beautiful cavalcade is the carousel itself, spinning and twinkling while the impossibly charismatic Billy lures in customers. The drama follows the tragic love affair of Julie (Laura Osnes) and Billy (Steven Pasquale) from courtship to marriage, beyond death-do-us-part and into the world of their troubled 15-year-old daughter, Louise (Abigail Simon). That sort of equivocation simply doesn't play today, no matter how sizzling the magnetism that draws Julie and Billy together. Audiences of the 1950s might well have excused Billy Bigelow for hitting his saintly, suffering wife, Julie, and bought his repeated contention that hitting one's wife is a totally different thing than beating one's wife.
That's precisely what heroine Julie Jordan tearfully asserts throughout the tale of a New England mill girl who falls in love with a carnival barker. One moment you're soaring on the anthemic crescendos of "You'll Never Walk Alone," the next, you're brought up short by a leading lady who insists that when a man who loves you hits you, it doesn't really hurt. But outside the music, the 1946 musical hasn't' aged particularly well. In the Lyric Opera's opulent staging of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel, The score is inarguably glorious and swoon-worthy.
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