About the work
Play in a prologue and seven scenes by Ferenc Molnár, first performed on 7 December 1909 at the Vígszínház in Budapest. Molnár himself called the piece a 'suburban legend', setting it among the barkers of a fairground carousel; the German adaptation by Alfred Polgar, which premiered in Vienna in 1912, fixed that subtitle for later productions.
Plot
The brash carousel barker Liliom falls in love with the maid Julie and loses his fairground job through their marriage. Driven by poverty, he lets himself be talked into a robbery that goes wrong, and stabs himself rather than be arrested. In the afterlife he is granted one day back on earth to do a good deed for the daughter he never knew — and once again fails because of his violent temper.
Cultural significance
The 1909 premiere was a flop; only a 1919 revival at the same theatre turned Liliom into one of the most widely performed plays of the twentieth century. In 1945 Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein relocated the story to New England as the musical 'Carousel', which remains a staple of the musical stage.