For some, the carousel has evolved into a place to spend lazy afternoons, but for many others, it's a way to recapture a slice of childhood.

Lounging in the Carousel Café as the Wurlitzer organ grinds above (the carousel sits on the second floor as a safeguard against potential flood damage), you'll munch on popcorn and clamcakes as you recall the days of yore.

CAROUSEL (THE MUSICAL): Did you know that one of Rodgers and Hammerstein's most celebrated musicals "revolves" around a carousel?

In a Maine coastal village toward the end of the 19th century, the swaggering, carefree carnival barker Billy Bigelow captivates and marries a naive millworker, Julie Jordan. Billy loses his job just as he learns that Julie is pregnant and, desperately intent upon providing a decent life for his family, he is coerced into being an accomplice to a robbery. Caught in the act and facing the certainty of prison, he takes his own life and is sent "up there." Billy is allowed to return to earth for one day and, time being what it is "up there," fifteen years have passed and he now encounters the teenage daughter he never knew. She is a lonely, friendless child, her father's reputation as a thief and bully having haunted her throughout her young life. How Billy instills in both the child and her mother a sense of hope and dignity is a dramatic testimony to the power of love. It's easy to understand why, of all the shows they created, Carousel was Rodgers & Hammerstein's personal favorite.

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