Word: pettish
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Carousel sentimentalizes the redemptive power of parenthood for Billy, a pettish, self-pitying idler and punk whom Hayden plays with an early-Brando sneer. Becoming a father may not make an abusive husband saintly; it often just gives him a new victim to pummel. A compelling actor, Hayden is not enough of a singer -- he loses his way rhythmically and sounds faint in the score's one modernist number, the anthemic Soliloquy ("my boy Bill"), which ends the first act. Sally Murphy is too bland to evoke sympathy as Billy's doormat of a wife...