He served a wrathful and angry god

When I was in London, I saw several excellent plays.  The Barbican had a wonderful production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's CAROUSEL, with some inspired choreography.  Now that I think of it, the female characters are mostly sympathetic (though Mrs. Mullin seems sinister in an almost pimplike fashion). I used to live in New Brunswick, next door to Maine, and I've always imagined Mainers as Cousin Nettie types:  more sensible than regular Americans.

But the men?  The mortal male characters (we'll put aside the Starkeeper and his angel) are largely, in their different ways, jerks.  Billy is irresponsible and lacking in courage; Enoch is set in the life he's planned and expects his wife to adapt to it, unable to appreciate his luck in finding in Carrie a woman willing to do that; Jigger is a user who relies on suckers like Billy; Mr. Bascombe is one of those rich people who moralizes about the less well-off; the local policeman is his toady; and even the Snow son who woos Louise is a twit.

I recently saw the HBO film of Richard Russo's EMPIRE FALLS, and its setting was like the factory town in CAROUSEL after a century of decline.  Theresa Russell as the waitress reminded me of someone, but I couldn't remember who at first.  After seeing this show I realized it was Barbara Ruick, who played Carrie in the 1956 movie of CAROUSEL. (That movie had its flaws--did we really need to learn that Jigger ended up in hell?--but Gordon Macrae and Shirley Jones had the chemistry to pull it off.)

I also saw a revival of Stephen Sondheim's SWEENEY TODD.  WOW!  When they made Sondheim, they broke the mold. (I like to think that afterward the judge managed to survive his throat-cutting and send the retarded boy to the gallows.)