‘Carmen Jones’ Opens at the New Vic

Carmen Jones, the Oscar Hammerstein musical that opened the latest season of the Ensemble Theatre Company at the New Vic, took two years to come to fruition given the pandemic delays, but it was clearly worth the wait!

Directed by Artistic Director Jonathan Fox, the hugely entertaining show featuring an all-Black cast and based on Bizet’s opera Carmen, delights from beginning to end with Fredericka Meek as the seductive principal character and Chauncey Packer as her besotted misguided beau.

With a talented supporting cast of Zelda Carmen, Nataley Carter, Ashli Ferguson, Michael Howard-Dossett, Constance Jewell Lopez, Desmond Newson, Christopher James Hester, and Troy D. Wallace, the four-act production can’t fail to please with a six-member band under conductor-pianist William Foster McDaniel perched loftily above the action starting in a parachute factory in the early 1940s.

Kudos goes to scenic and lighting designer François-Pierre Couture and choreographer Lisa Ruffin.

The show runs through October 23.