by Diane Ferguson

My daughters both like acting, so we took them to see Carousel at the Roxy this past fall. We got together with other friends who were bringing their children. The play was so well done, well-acted, the sound was fantastic, but the play itself left me stunned. Is this 2016?

The basic premise of the story is a young woman falls in love with a bad-boy, Billy the barker, from the carousel. They go through hard economic times and he hits his wife. But his wife never gives up because she loves him. Billy dies in a botched robbery and is given a chance to redeem himself. He offers his now grown-up daughter, a star he stole. When she refuses, he hits her too. The daughter asks her mother if it's possible for a hit to feel like a kiss. And her mother answers, yes. Billy is redeemed and goes to heaven.

I have to admit, I didn't read up on this play before attending. But it was a musical. I didn't expect toexperience a play that condoned hitting women. And a woman who was "so in love" that he could do anything and she would be there for him. That's not what love means to me. And that's not the message I want to give my daughters about love. Or that there's EVER a place for hitting in a relationship.

And I don't want to single the Roxy out. This was the 70th anniversary of the original musical performance on Broadway. This play is being performed across North America.

Do we not, when selecting a play to be performed, consider its message and how it might be seen in this day and age? I'm not even sure what Rodgers and Hammerstein were trying to say originally.

Carousel is a musical based on a play called, Liliom. From the write-up on Liliom, there was more subtlety to the story: A dealing with the reality that violence towards women does occur, and occurs more frequently in lower economic class homes where financial hardship increases family tension.

On Wikipedia I read Rodgers and Hammerstein changed the ending because the original ending wasn't upbeat enough:

"Rodgers explained his rationale for the changed ending, 'Liliom was a tragedy about a man who cannot learn to live with other people. The way Molnár wrote it, the man ends up hitting his daughter and then having to go back to purgatory, leaving his daughter helpless and hopeless. We couldn't accept that. The way we ended Carousel it may still be a tragedy but it's a hopeful one because in the final scene it is clear that the child has at last learned how to express herself and communicate with others.'" (Wikipedia/Carousel)

I'm not against dealing with the hard realities of life. In fact, I believe it's the only way to move beyond them. But if Rodgers and Hammerstein were making a social statement about domestic violence in lower income homes, it did not come across. I saw a woman so blindly in love, a love stronger than violence, in fact that violence sometimes "felt like a kiss".

For those who grew up with violence, it can be associated with love. We know enough today to understand these situations are difficult and leaving is more complicated than we may realize.

It's important we raise our sons and daughters to understand violence is never part of love. We shouldn't let love blind us so to ourselves.

As a society, we need to face the reality that violence against women is still prevalent. Women need safe places to go. Just this year, a young teenager within our community, died suspiciously after revealing her torment at the hands of violence on facebook.

And when I read the stories of Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women, their isolation was beyond my urban comprehension. They literally have nowhere to go, except to take a long, lonely road out of town. No wonder they either stay or become easy prey. We have some politicians who believe this is an indigenous problem: native against native, so write it off as not "our" concern.

We have to deal with it. And the reality is, hard economic times and alcohol are the fuel that fires the beast. Women need safe places, need to understand that hitting is not love. And men need to be raised how to deal with their anger.

These are the stories we need to tell our children. Perhaps it's time to leave some old musicals in the past, where they belong. To consider the message afresh and pick something a little more relevant to today. Not every story has a happy ending.