On Saturday I went to see Caroline, Or Change at the National Theatre, a very black, very Jewish, and, despite the absence of gay characters or themes, very gay night out - as you would expect from Tony Kushner, writer of the immense Angels In America. It was a very good night out, too. Not only did it give me the chance to hold my wife's hand in the dark, it also got me thinking about some of the stuff that matters most in this nation right now, as it did in the America of 1963 where it is set (and where that stuff still matters, by the way).
The Caroline of the title is a Nat King Cole fan and maid to a liberal Jewish household in Louisiana. Closing in on forty and the lone mother of three, her changing relationships with her children, her employers, the little boy of the household (who likes her more than he does his stepmother, his real mother having died) and her best friend reflect the wider upheavals of the time. There's lots to like about the show, not least the singing washing machine, the gold lame pencil frocks and the presence in the cast of Ian Lavender and Clive Rowe. And there's the way it focuses the choices and dilemmas that may face a person with limited choices in life for whom change - be it the loose kind or the social, for both are addressed in the show - presents threats as well as opportunities.
How does this apply to here and now? Well, it obliquely sheds a helpful light on certain aspects of the ongoing, fractious debates about identity, inequality and integration, nationhood, liberalism and loyalty. Islamist bomb plots (alleged), the flag-waving of the World Cup and government ministers' attempts to mount the platforms of "tolerance" and "Britishness" at the same time have demonstrated the complexities of fostering social cohesion in a society whose citizens demand and exercise their freedom to be different. And, unlike the government, I'm not talking only about Muslims here - I'm talking about almost everyone.
Where this intersects with Caroline's predicament is in her uncertainty over what to do with the new possibilities presented by the era of JFK and Martin Luther King as they impinge upon her careworn and yet comfortingly settled situation. Does she want to stay a church-going, "good negro" in the basement where she is queen or does she want to move on up and explore the widening landscape of the future? If the latter, what might the consquences be? The historical scenario may not be exactly the same but some of the same questions might well be in the minds of many in minority and marginalized groups here. They are about who you are, who you might wish you could be, what the realities around you will allow you to be and who you can allow youself to be. They are about the benefits of sticking close to your present identity as compared with those of seeking to inhabit another. Caroline? Or Change? Or maybe both?
I hope to tackle this subject in greater depth on Comment Is Free soon. And you, dear reader, should try to get a ticket for the show.
...what the realities around you will allow you to be ... very weighty matters, Dave but none so weighty as holding your wife's hand in the dark. Now that's way cool.
Posted by: james higham | December 19, 2006 at 09:19 PM