Overview
In a Maine coastal village toward the end of the 19th century, the
swaggering, carefree carnival barker, Billy Bigelow, captivates and
marries the naive millworker, Julie Jordan. Billy loses his job just as
he learns that Julie is pregnant and, desperately intent upon providing a
decent life for his family, is coerced into being an accomplice to a
robbery. Caught in the act and facing the certainty of prison, Billy
takes his own life and is sent “up there.” He is allowed to return to
earth for one day 15 years later, and he encounters the daughter he
never knew. She is a lonely, friendless teenager, her father's
reputation as a thief and bully having haunted her throughout her young
life. Billy instills a sense of hope and dignity in both the child and
her mother in a dramatic testimony to the power of love. It's easy to
understand why, of all the shows they created, Carousel was Rodgers & Hammerstein's personal favourite.