Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber by Block, Geoffrey (good story books to read .TXT) 📕

Also like Magnolia and Ravenal, Julie and Billy—as well as Laurey and Curley in the analogous “People Will Say We’re in Love”—describe a hypothetical rather than an acknowledged love, at least at the outset of their duets. The romantic leads in Show Boat, however, declare their love in the waltz “You Are Love” at the emotional climax of act I and offer additional explanations for their feelings early in act II when they sing “Why Do I Love You?” (at least before Hal Prince gave this song to Parthy in the 1994 Broadway revival). In contrast, Julie and Billy, more tragically, are unable to express their love directly, not only in their first duet, “If I Loved You,” but at any point in the drama, at least while Billy is alive.

In an extremely poignant moment that immediately follows Billy’s suicide in act II, scene 2, Julie finally manages to share her feelings with her deceased husband: “One thing I never told you—skeered you’d laugh at me. I’ll tell you now—(Even now she has to make an effort to overcome her shyness in saying it) I love you. I love you. (In a whisper) I love—you. (Smiles) I was always ashamed to say it out loud. But now I said it. Didn’t I?”13

Outside Julie’s cottage three scenes later, Billy, whose presence is felt rather than seen or heard, finally sings his love in the following reprise (release and final A section) of “If I Loved You.” According to Rodgers, this inspired new idea was, after the removal of Mr. and Mrs. God, the only other major change made during the tryouts. “Longing to tell you, / But afraid and shy, / I let my golden chances pass me by. / Now I’ve lost you; / Soon I will go in the mist of day, / And you never will know / How I loved you. / How I loved you.”14

Just as Kern conveys Magnolia’s penetration into Ravenal’s being by merging her music with his, Rodgers finds subtle musical ways to let audiences know that Julie’s love for Billy is similarly more than hypothetical. During the opening exchange between Carrie and Julie, for example, Julie’s friend makes it clear that she knows why Julie is behaving so “queerly.” First, Carrie describes Julie’s recent habit of rising early and sitting silently by the window. Julie lamely denies this circumstantial evidence of love sickness (“I like to watch the river meet the sea”), but Carrie’s next and more telling observation of Julie’s behavior on the job, the “Mill Theme” (Example 9.1) is incontrovertible: “When we work in the mill, weavin’ at the loom, / Y’ gaze absent-minded at the roof, / And half the time yer shuttle gets twisted in the threads / Till y’can’t tell the warp from the woof!”15

Although Julie denies even this evidence with a “‘Tain’t so!,” her strangeness, even more than Frankie’s in On Your Toes, cannot be attributed to tonsillitis or to the combination of pickles and pie à la mode: it’s got to be love. The sensitive Carrie, now that Julie has a “feller,” can inform Julie of her own romantic good fortune in being courted by the young entrepreneur Enoch Snow. This time Julie does not attempt to deny Carrie’s presumption. When Julie explains to Billy minutes later how she would behave, hypothetically, “if she loved him,” Rodgers and Hammerstein have her describe, again to the “Mill Theme,” the behavior that Carrie has in fact already observed. Julie’s denial of love may satisfy Billy, but it fails to convince either Carrie or a knowing audience who has more than sufficient textual and musical evidence to catch Julie in her self-deception.

Example 9.1. The “Mill Theme”

The spark that will eventually set fire to Julie and Billy has already been lit in the pantomimed prelude to act I.16 During this prelude we see that Billy “takes his mind off his work” when he watches Julie and that she gains his attention in part by being the only person who does not “sway unconsciously with the rhythm of his words.” The description of the prelude’s action points out (parenthetically) that “Billy’s attitude to Julie throughout this scene is one of only casual and laconic interest.” Although he makes a point of finding the last place on the carousel for Julie, he then “dismisses her from his mind.” When he later waves “patronizingly,” the omniscient description notes that “it means nothing to him,” but that “it means so much to her that she nearly falls!”17

“If I Loved You,” the climactic moment in the following Bench Scene (act I, scene 1), reinforces these discrepancies in emotional intensity and awareness between the principals. Julie sings as a young woman already in love; Billy, although he admits to having noticed Julie at the carousel “three times before today” (she has actually been there far more often) sings, if not about a hypothetical love, about a love that he does not yet comprehend. Thus Billy can truthfully assert that if he loved Julie he would be “scrawny and pale,” and “lovesick like any other guy.” So far none of these symptoms has appeared. In fact, Billy does not realize until act II, scene 5, what Mrs. Mullin, the jealous, older, and less desirable carousel proprietress, has understood only too well as early as the prelude. Already in the pantomimed introduction Mrs. Mullin has demonstrated that, like Julie, she is enamored of Billy. Also in the prelude Mrs. Mullin has observed his unique attraction to Julie. We learn later that Mrs. Mullin correctly perceived that this peculiar young woman posed a serious threat both to her business—the other young women would patronize the carousel less ardently if Billy were romantically attached—and to any more personal relationship she might enjoy with her favorite barker.

Carousel, prelude to act I. Jan Clayton