Carnival!

Carnival! at the Kennedy Center, Saturday March 3, 2007

Carnival! the musical first appeared on Broadway in 1961; the musical was based on the 1953 movie, "Lili", starring Leslie Caron. The movie was based on a short story that appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in 1950, called "The Man Who Hated People". The story is about a young woman (mid to late teens) whose parents had died, and she went to find a good friend of her father's who worked in a carnival and who would take care of her. Unfortunately, he too had died just a month before she arrived. Having no place to go, she stayed with the carnival.

She was an innocent girl, who did not understand when the star of the show, the magician -- tried to take advantage of her. To survive, she began to work in the carnival's puppet show. She loved the puppets, and because of her innocent interaction with them, the puppet show became the greatest attraction at the carnival. The puppeteer was a man who had been a dancer, but who had an injury that had cut his career short. He had become very angry and mean -- the "man who hated everyone". So the show was about a conniving man and a very angry, mean man pitted against this innocent girl. This conflict went on and on, and it was very disturbing to me. In the end, like the Beauty and the Beast, through her love and kindness, she was able to tame the mean man and make him nice and loving like her, but by then, I didn't even want that. I just wanted her to be rid of these people, and I wanted to be rid of the show.

The show disturbed me. I did not like it at all. I am accustomed to seeing great shows, so when I see one that is not good, it seems even worse than it probably is in reality. But this one disturbed me. I was not amused by this particular conflict. I am certainly not opposed to elusive, unavailable men, but I don't like mean people, and I don't like older men who take advantage of young girls.

At a more basic level, this story is ancient -- the story of the attraction of "bad boys" to women. The eternal temptation, bad boys have tempted women in Virgil's Dido, Shakespeare's Helena, Jane Austen's Elizabeth Bennett, Margaret Mitchell's Scarlett O'Hara, The Beauty and The Beast. Women always seem to fall for bad boys. Bad boys are often not handsome, but they are masculine and elusive and unavailable, the perfect ingredients for sexual attraction. Although bad boys are tamed in stories, in real life they seldom are. In real life, women must decide whether they want a man who stimulates them sexually, or a "good man" who will be a good husband and partner. Seldom will a woman find one who is both. Often nowadays, women choose both a good man for a husband, and a "bad boy" as a lover. The perfect solution to the eternal problem!

Playbill story.