Carousel 2018
Rodgers & Hammerstein's Carousel Broadway Cast Recording

In the hands of three-time Tony Award-winning director Jack O’Brien, Broadway’s major new staging of Carousel is demonstrating the 75-year-old show’s muscles once again, walking into the 2018 Tony Awards as the most-nominated of this season’s musical revivals with eleven.

Carousel, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s dark heartbreak of a classic, has been one of the most adored Broadway musicals since its 1945 premiere. The passion between lovers Billy Bigelow and Julie Jordan may start off fleetingly on a bench under falling blossoms in the stirring “If I Loved You” scene but proves to have tremendous power, altering the course of their own lives and those of their families and friends, even after death.

In the hands of three-time Tony Award-winning director Jack O’Brien, Broadway’s major new staging of Carousel is demonstrating the 75-year-old show’s muscles once again, walking into the 2018 Tony Awards as the most-nominated of this season’s musical revivals with eleven. Among those nods are five for stars Joshua Henry, Jessie Mueller, Renee Fleming, Lindsay Mendez and Alexander Gemingnani, who mine the challenges and triumphs of the show’s rich text nightly.

To toast their triumph—Carousel also boasts the most acting nominations of any production this year—Broadway.com gathered the fantastic five for a photo shoot at the Metropolitan Building with Photo Director Caitlin McNaney as well as a roundtable chat with Editor-in-Chief Paul Wontorek. Below are highlights from both.

Carousel, “one of the most hallowed works of the American stage” (The New York Times), returns to Broadway for the first time in more than two decades. Rodgers & Hammerstein's timeless musical Carousel comes to life in a new production starring Tony Award® nominee Joshua Henry (Hamilton, Shuffle Along), Tony winner Jessie Mueller (Beautiful, Waitress), and Renée Fleming in her first-ever appearance in a Broadway musical. Three-time Tony winner Jack O'Brien (The Front Page, The Coast of Utopia) directs, with choreography by New York City Ballet's Justin Peck.

Set in a small New England factory town, Carousel describes the tragic romance between a troubled carnival barker and the young woman who gives up everything for him. Elevated to an epic scale with a sweeping musical score and incandescent ballet sequences, this story of passion, loss and redemption introduced Broadway to a new manner of musical drama — one that “set the standard for the 20th century musical” (Time Magazine) and would captivate theatergoers for generations to come.

Featuring some of the most beloved numbers in the American songbook, Carousel is “nothing less than a masterpiece” (The New York Times). “One of America's finest theatrical achievements.” - Richard L. Coe, The Washington Post “The most glorious of the Rodgers & Hammerstein works. Nothing less than a masterpiece.” -Brooks Atkinson, The New York Times “I shall remember it always.” - John Chapman, Daily News

More info at: Carousel Broadway