There’s one major reason to enjoy Caroline, or Change at Westcoast Black Theater Troupe. It’s the performance by Jannie Jones of the title character, both emotionally and musically. As Jeanine Tesori’s music is so varied in type and carries the best of Tony Kushner’s book along, the show comes off as a pop opera. Its theme is where Change comes in, and ironically it applies more to others than to the heroine. It’s 1963 and Caroline (charismatic Jannie Jones), single mother of three, is hardly able to support all despite working 22 years, mainly as laundress in the Gellman home. It’s a troubled atmosphere since Stuart Gellman’s wife died. He (Courtney Dease) has remarried but then withdrawn from Rose (Eliza Engle, distraught). She’s unable to cope with him or his son Noah (whom I saw poignantly played by Charles Shoemaker). He’d prefer to be adopted by Caroline. The year brings the death of President Kennedy and life into the Civil Rights Movement with denouncement of anti-semitism along with racial prejudice. The Gellman grandparents are uneasy, but Rose and her father Mr. Stopnick (John Lombard, in authoritarian mode) concentrate on Noah needing to learn the value of money. Rose has already told Caroline she can keep change Noah’s left in his pockets to teach him a lesson. She doesn’t want to but gives in for her family’s sake, leading to a real problem when Noah carelessly sends a $20 bill from his step-grandfather to the wash. All the while, Caroline’s friend Dotty (Candy McLellan, sensible) tries to reconcile her with the times, but her daughter Emma (Alexis Ijeoma Nwoko, pretty and powerful) is already in revolt against injustice toward African Americans. What will Caroline do? Will she accept the moderation offered by the Moon (Teresa Stanley, stately and in good voice)? Will she listen to the disgust of The Washer (Vallera E. Woodburg) or The Dryer (a devilishly red-jacketed Brian L. Boyd, who’s more restrained but still insistent later as a Bus)? Have clues to Caroline’s ultimate actions be given by The Radio (flashily dressed Toddra Brunson, Annaya Osborn, Stephanie Sandra as a syncopated chorus of commentators)? How will Caroline’s children Jackie and Joe (Samuel Waite and Kenyon Edwards), the more dependent but very nice boys, fare? And how is Emma affected now and for the future? All the questions are asked and answered in music ranging from blues through Motown, klezmer, opera, and folk to gospel, well played by a backstage band under pianist and conductor Nikki Ervin. Director Jim Weaver choreographed every move onstage, notably in the swinging and swaying of The Radio three. He’s had each song distinctly and “naturally” delivered, even by the Moon, an actually unnecessary part. Jannie Jones triumphs in song in a final series of anticlimaxes (of Kushner’s puzzling structure), reaching a range that heightens beyond what seems at each stage impossible to grow. Still, her lyrics are understandable, despite a sound system or perhaps acoustics in WBTT’s just-renovated theater that work against audience comprehension. Luckily, lighting and costuming (dresses especially well known as a WBTT asset) help to deliver understanding. The set of three floors of the Gilman house and side areas that turn into street scenes and such is adequate, given the judicious use of changing props. What’s sung is more important than where it’s sung…and by good voices.
