Lovely Music But The Magic Is Missing At Stage Door’s ‘Carnival’

Technical actors manipulate an audience by pushing this emotional button or that one, carefully timed and bathed in this light or that. But that only gets you so far. The magic that theater can be is far more elusive, even when it’s backed up with energy and elbow grease.

The 1961 musical Carnival – rarely produced but beloved for its original cast album – is very difficult to land because it requires that magic be conjured to reconcile a tale in which a young woman’s child-like innocence credibly persists in a ragged post-war world wounded by harsh realities. To keep its signature song “Love Makes The World Go ‘Round” from being saccharine — indeed, for it to become a clear-eyed prescription for the world’s ills — that takes an exceptional talent at theatrical prestidigitation.

Broward Stage Door’s edition under Dan Kelley’s experienced hand features a hard-working cast, some of whom have fine voices doing adequate justice to the gorgeous score and lyrics, but that alchemical enchantment just isn’t there.

The music numbers swelling with emotion or sparkling with wry wit come off reasonably well sometimes, thank goodness, but the book scenes play a couple of cuts better than what you’d see in an amateur production.