Carousel

Carousel: Rodgers and Hammerstein's 1945 musical with a book by Benjamin Glazer was adapted from Ferenc Molnar's turn of the century Hungarian play Liliom. Reset in New England around 1873, ladies' man Billy Bigelow works as a carousel barker for jealous Mrs. Mullins, who impulsively fires him when he expresses interest in mill worker Julie Jordan. To her friend Carrie Pipperidge's shock, quiet and naive Julie decides to spend the evening with Billy, missing her dormitory's curfew and causing the mill owner, Mr. Bascombe, to fire her. Billy and Julie move in with Julie's cousin Nettie Fowler, but their young marriage is strained by continued financial struggles. Billy becomes sullen and violent and begins to hang out with the ne'er-do-well sailor Jigger Craigin, who is planning a large scale robbery of the local mill. When Julie tells him that she is pregnant, Billy decides that the only way to provide for his family is to join Jigger's life of crime. Caught by Mr. Bascombe during a hold-up, Jigger escapes and Billy commits suicide. Fifteen years later, the Starkeeper gives Billy one last chance to get into Heaven – he has one day back on Earth to do a good act for his lonely, insecure daughter Louise.

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