I went and saw Caroline, or Change a month or so ago. I thought it was good, yet perhaps not as amazing as all the reviews I'd read of it had led me to believe. (I'm a bit particular about my musicals, especially ones with singing children.) Still, it did do a good job of capturing the squeamish relationship between well-meaning liberals and the black people who work(ed) for them. Or so I thought. This letter-writer to the J. thunk different:
My wife and I went to see the highly acclaimed play à ¬Caroline, or Change à ® (Jan. 21 j.) yesterday and were deeply offended by the gratuitous exploitation of Jews.
Jews and their love of money serve as a convenient backdrop for the playwright s unsuccessful attempt to work out his own guilt-ridden angst about being a modern Jew.
This play, really a mini-opera with no memorable tunes, is a missed opportunity where the two groups, Jews and blacks (both with a history of slavery), never connect.
I almost walked out when Caroline says the harsh and unnecessary line à à ®Hell is the place where Jews go when they die. à ®
At a time when Israel fights for its very survival, and Jews again are experiencing global anti-Semitism, this play further feeds the flames of Jewish stereotypes by depicting Jews as more concerned with pocket change left in the basement às washer where the maid Caroline works than with the internal struggles of the black protagonist.
Readers should save their precious time and avoid this play.
Um... Did he expect Caroline to suddenly stop in the middle of the action and give a speech about the Ãeternal solidarity between blacks and Jews? Did he not notice that the little boy called her names too? Did the context ³ the South in the early 1960s à ³ totally pass him by?
Just how narrowminded and narrowsighted do you have to be?
