Tour Dates
To the strains of the "Carousel Waltz" the curtain rises upon an amusement park in a New England town in 1873. Fishermen, sailors, mill girls and children are enjoying the sights and sounds of a carnival atmosphere. Two mill girls, Carrie Pipperidge and Julie Jordan, are having a good time until Mrs. Mullin, proprietress of the carousel, scolds them when she thinks they are flirting with her charismatic carousel barker, Billy Bigelow. When he jumps to the defence of the girls, Mrs. Mullin summarily fires him. Billy shrugs off the dismissal and instead invites the girls to have a beer with him.
While he is off to get his belongings, Carrie asks her friend Julie whether she finds Billy attractive, but Julie is singularly evasive ("You're a Queer One, Julie Jordan"). Carrie thereupon confides to Julie that she has a fellow of her own, the fisherman Enoch Snow, whom she plans to marry ("When I Marry Mr. Snow"). When Billy returns and is left alone with Julie they begin to talk about love, and the kind of person each would be attracted to. When Billy inquires if Julie could ever marry a person such as he is, Julie replies that she would - if she loved him ("If I Loved You").
