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Honest Oklahoma Revival Review: Musical Tour Not Like the Original

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If you’re expecting the Oklahoma musical tour to be a colorful and cheerful night out, think again. This may be the most honest Oklahoma revival review you’ll find…

Honest Oklahoma Revival Review

If you want the bullet-point version of my honest Oklahoma revival review, here you go:

• The revival takes a dark turn from the original
• The score stayed the same, though with a more melancholy tone throughout
• The sound/microphone choices made it hard to hear
• Some of the scenes were done completely in the dark
• The one-room set never changed (tables just moved from Act 1 to Act 2)
• The ending was thought-provoking but heavy

Essentially, I do not think this revival is worth your time or money.

Watch my video review from the night I saw the revival:

The oklahoma revival keeps original music & lyrics.

One of the most interesting facts about the Oklahoma revival is that although it seems to be completely reimagined, the original music and lyrics did not change. I found this synopsis from Broadway World said it well:

…dark and haunting, serious and disturbing, funny and moving, but surprisingly, not a single lyric or word of dialogue has been changed.  – BroadwayWorld.com

While you may recognize the songs, it’s the stylistic choices that will surprise you. Just about everything else seemed to be turned on its head.

Is the Oklahoma Revival Family Friendly?

We had two tween girls sitting next to us during the night we saw the Oklahoma revival and it took everything within me not to ask their parents if they would bring them again.

The show was not raunchy, but there were a LOT of sexual innuendos and jokes throughout. Not to mention the main storyline basically centered around a “will they or won’t they” get together question for two different couples.

There was kissing, but no swearing.

My biggest advice for parents that choose to bring kids would be to prepare them in advance. There will be questions. And because the ending is dramatic and disturbing (and shows typically end late), be prepared to help your kids process some dark themes before they go to bed.

Dark Themes in Oklahoma Broadway Tour

Some of those dark themes in the Oklahoma Broadway tour include class privilege, stalking, and mental illness.

The irony of this is that when we first entered the theater, I commented that it felt lighter and brighter than any production I’ve ever seen.

The set essentially stayed the same throughout the show. The fringe on the top (see what I did there?) came down a little lower in the second act, along with tables and chairs getting moved around a bit.

But don’t let the open airy set fool you. Twice during the musical the set went completely black. Two other times, while the set was dark, a camera projected much-too-close-ups of the actors in night vision on the back wall. Both moments felt awkward, but I imagine that as the intent.

Ironically, at intermission I commented that it felt like a modern, contemporary dance that I didn’t quite understand. Then, guess how the second act started…you guessed it: with a modern, contemporary solo dancer I didn’t quite understand. She was incredibly talented, but it added to the production feeling dark and twisted.

Spoiler Alert : In the end, one of the characters basically offered up a gun for someone to shoot him. The main couple ended up with blood splattered all over their wedding whites, which remained on them through the curtain call.

On a positive note, the cast was multi-racial and inclusive, which was definitely not the case in the original.

Let me pause here to make something clear: just because I don’t enjoy something doesn’t invalidate the art. My only purpose in this is to educate and inform. I wish I knew what I was walking into before I went. For others who are considering going to the show, it’s important to know how you’re choosing to invest your time and resources.

Oklahoma Tour in Nashville

You can see the touring revival of Oklahoma at TPAC in Nashville from May 2-8. I was provided with free tickets to see Oklahoma in exchange for my honest review.

Nashville Blogger, Media Personality, & Communications Professor. Sami Cone mentors others to live their dream life on less and pursue their passions through her blog and 30-minute TV show, "The Sami Cone Show". She authored the best-selling book, "Raising Uncommon Kids" and is known as the "Frugal Mom" on Nashville's top-rated talk show. She is proud to call Nashville home with her two teenaged children (a daughter & son) who are 19 months apart.

Oklahoma in Nashville {The Daily Dash: May 3, 2022}

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Just saw the show last night in Dallas. We were really looking forward to it – didn’t realize it was a “modern interpretation” until several days before. It was dark – like literally dark – and slow…gave me “film noir” vibes. Not only did they make it dark & twisty, but had complete disregard for the original story or place in time. The backdrop is supposed to be 1906 where the two territories are on the verge of becoming the 47th state in the union. None of that was evident by looking at the set, clothing, or props. Ugh. I just wish they didn’t advertise it as “Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!” — it may be their dialog/lyrics, but it is by no means the Oklahoma! created by R&H.

I agree about how it was mis-advertised.

This was literally the WORST Broadway musical I have ever seen and I have had season tickets for the Broadway series in Charleston, SC for the last 22 years. Left at intermission after painfully sitting through the first half! Your review was SPOT ON!

I’m sorry you had that experience, but I appreciate your feedback. I tried to post what I did to save people from having the same frustrations I did. Hopefully the next show will be better!

[…] my full review here: https://www.samicone.com/honest-oklahoma-revival-review/ […]

My wife and friend said it was the worst performance they had ever seen and only stayed to the end to hear “Oklahoma “. We are veteran TPAC members and have seen dozens of shows on Broadway

This echoes most people’s sentiments. I’m hoping for a better summer season!

This was the worst play that I have seen in years. It was not entertaining at all; it became stressful trying to hear what they were saying and hoping that it would get better. I left at halftime because it became suffering.

You definitely weren’t the only one!

This show was a huge disappointment . I was expecting much better after seeing the original version as a child back in the 50’s.

Wow! I can only imagine what it was like seeing the original version!

Sadly, I must agree 100% with your assessment. They have essentially destroyed this classic American musical. There are so many bad things to say about it that I won’t bother. It’s only the second broadway musical that my wife and I have walked out of at intermission. We just couldn’t stand watching more of it.

I completely understand; I sincerely hoped it would get better, but alas, it didn’t. Curious: what was the other musical you walked out on?

We were also gifted tickets from friends who were unable to go. We agree 100% with your comments, except to add that we found the show lacking in energy. A friend we saw during intermission said that she’d seen better high school musicals..

Yes, it was lacking energy, but that also seemed like an artistic choice on some level – it was all melancholy. And I agree, it seemed like a high school production, except that I’ve seen better high school shows!

Ive been seeing shows at TPAC FOR 40 YEARS. and I can honestly say this was the worst show I have ever seen. Poor stage setup. Poor acting. Poor singing. Poor sound.

Wow – you certainly have the track record! I’m sorry to have to agree with you on all counts.

We left at halftime! The whole 15 minutes of darkness for Poor Judd was about enough for us. Your review was spot on. We were by no means the only people that left at the intermission. It sounds like it was a good decision from the rest of your review. Very disappointing! And we did spend money to see this show, times for people. Wish we could get that back! Rogers and Hammerstein would be rolling over in their graves on this one. It was not a good luck for this show!

I’m sorry you had to spend money on the tickets. That’s why I did the review – so people at least knew what they were walking into (or so they could be informed before they bought tickets!)

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Review: Daniel Fish’s brooding, deconstructed ‘Oklahoma!’ electrifies the Ahmanson

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Of all the impressive feats director Daniel Fish pulls off in his thrilling deconstruction of “Oklahoma!,” the most impressive might be that in deromanticizing the musical he somehow manages not to kill off the romance at the heart of the show.

This Tony-winning revival arrives at the Ahmanson Theatre, where it opened Thursday, bearing a multitude of red flags. A “Know Before You Go” email from Center Theatre Group spells out that this modern-dress production features “actors of different races, backgrounds, sexualities, gender identities, and religions in a company of storytellers reflecting the rich diversity of America.”

Standard practice in the upper echelons of the American theater these days, but someone is nervous about something. The source of this anxiety comes into focus later in the email: “What was once seen as a nostalgic and romantic vision of an idealistic prairie community with a tinge of brewing conflict is now a provocative, gritty, and sexy 21st-century commentary on America’s dark and oppressive histories.”

Theatergoers, particularly those with a fondness for the golden age of Broadway, can be militantly protective of classic American musicals. “Oklahoma!” sits at the center of this tradition. But this bracing modern production isn’t trying to start a culture war. It just wants us to see the show with fresh eyes.

The 1943 musical by Richard Rodgers, who wrote the music, and Oscar Hammerstein II, who wrote the book and lyrics, represents a leap in form in the integration of story and song that began years earlier with Hammerstein’s collaboration with Jerome Kern on “Show Boat.” The success of “Oklahoma!” helped consolidate the book musical’s rise over gag-packed revues, in which musical numbers could be passed from one show to another, so tenuous was their relationship to a larger plot.

Fred Zinnemann’s 1955 film, starring Gordon MacRae as Curly and Shirley Jones as Laurey, the stubborn young lovers determined not to betray their feelings for each other, brought “Oklahoma!” and its brilliant Broadway craftsmanship to the masses. But more importantly, the vision of America emanating from the big screen, with its glistening cornfields and folksy goodness and simplicity, was immediately incorporated into a nation’s self-esteem.

“Oklahoma!” is not just a musical but a cornerstone of the American myth. What’s ironic about this is that Hammerstein’s book, derived from Lynn Riggs’ play “Green Grow the Lilacs,” doesn’t stint from showing the sordid underside and lawlessness of American life.

Sexual violence lurks in the background of the story. Laurey hides in the house much of the day to avoid coming into contact with Jud, a hired hand on the farm she runs with Aunt Eller. A social outcast with a shady past, Jud has become obsessed with Laurey, who hears him pacing outside her window at night, like a predator waiting to pounce on a meal it has determined no other competitor will ever enjoy.

Curly is the man Laurey can’t get out of her mind, but her refusal to submit easily to his cocky affections keeps Jud’s hopes alive. When she agrees to go with Jud to a dance social, tensions explode between the men. Threats are made, guns are drawn and justice in the territory of turn-of-the-century Oklahoma, which is not yet a state but on the verge of becoming one, is capricious and sometimes bloody.

While it’s not technically accurate to say, as CTG’s email does, that the “revival is radically different from the original production without changing a word of the original text,” Fish in many respects hews closer than most to what Hammerstein wrote, at least until the ending, which requires some sleight of hand with the script.

The thrust of Fish’s staging is to get us to hear the musical drama in all its different registers. To that end, the characters speak to one another almost as if they were attending a meeting. Their words, delivered without undue distraction, assume pride of place.

The actors are arrayed on a set by Laura Jellinek that resembles a ramshackle community hall. A backdrop of Oklahoma landscape doesn’t reveal lush farmland but dry, unyielding prairie.

Settlers on this non-Edenic patch of earth must be tough and hardy. It’s no surprise then that the social interactions are rough and tumble. Sex is the main obsession, leaving a festive atmosphere that’s both highly charged and highly dangerous. There’s nothing dainty about the mating rituals in these parts.

Fish maintains a Brechtian distance between actor and role. Curly, played by Sean Grandillo with the guitar-slinging aplomb of a country-and-western recording star, has the straightest of hair. This is a minor disconnect, but it’s winked at by a production that has far more flamboyant tricks up its sleeve.

In defamiliarizing the usual trappings of the musical, Fish changes how it even sounds. The parade of heavenly musical numbers are orchestrated and arranged by Daniel Kluger for 21st century sensibilities. The band, inconspicuous but visible at the back of the set, slides easily between gently traditional and starkly contemporary modes under the music direction of Andy Collopy.

Sasha Hutchings, a Black actor who stars as Laurey and helps lead a multicultural ensemble, breaks up the monolithic whiteness of a musical that sings about the land without thinking too deeply about its complicated history. In her singing, as well as in her acting, Hutchings brings a plucky strength that doesn’t exclude fear, confusion or terrified vulnerability.

At St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, where I first saw this revival, and then on Broadway, Ali Stroker played Ado Annie, winning the 2019 Tony for her featured performance — the first actor who uses a wheelchair to do so. Now the role of this libidinously freewheeling comic character is played by Sis, a Black trans performer who infuses her numbers with thunderous energy.

Torn between two possible husbands, Ali Hakim (Benj Mirman), the peddler who enjoys playing the field, and Will Parker (Hennessy Winkler), the simple-minded swain desperate to marry her, Sis’ Ado Annie ricochets like a slippery pinball. When she singingly confesses, “I Cain’t Say No,” she’s not just being cute. This Ado Annie means business.

Jud, the villain of the musical, is a pariah who has to work doubly hard to keep a roof over his head. Christopher Bannow captures the character’s comprehensive loneliness. Sympathy is elicited without sentimentalizing a creep whose addiction to pre-digital-age porn may be the most touching aspect of his character. He suffers from having no one to love him. Unfortunately, the next steps he takes in his deranged path threaten rape and murder.

Fish conducts the scene that takes place in Jud’s lair in engulfing darkness. The blackout ratchets up the menace, but who’s the bad guy in this standoff between rivals for Laurey’s heart? Jud is obviously unhinged, but Curly is cruelly planting suicide as a romantic solution to Jud’s woes.

The lights go out again in a later scene, in which any fellow feeling for Jud is extinguished. Nerves are more frayed at this point, not only because Laurey seems to be in danger but also because of the terrifying gunshots that went off the last time the lights were cut.

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Video projections are sparingly introduced to give us close-ups of characters in extremis. The production never wants us to get too comfortable with how the show is proceeding. Indeed, Fish wrests us from any post-intermission relaxation with a reworked dream ballet sequence that begins in heavy-metal mode.

Not all of these daredevil directorial moves are eloquent, and the Ahmanson’s large proscenium stage objectifies the production in a way that distances the audience and subjects the shows to a more detached type of scrutiny. I hated the dream ballet in New York and found it even less expressive in Los Angeles. (No fault of lead dancer Jordan Wynn, who follows the aggressive choreography of John Heginbotham, which might be interpreted as a furious retort to Agnes de Mille’s groundbreaking achievement.)

Barbara Walsh upholds Aunt Eller’s standing as the soul of normality, even if normal is now being looked at more critically, if not cynically. Her role in the modified ending, which accentuates the bloodshed that the characters quickly hope to put behind them, may be the most chillingly faithful feature of this revamped revival.

Some may prefer “Oklahoma!” the old-fashioned way. But for those open to discovering the haunting underside of a sneakily complex musical, this production is boldly, brazenly alive.

A final word of warning to prospective theatergoers: You may never hum “Oh What a Beautiful Mornin’” with the same lightheartedness again.

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'Oklahoma!'

Where: Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A. When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sundays. Ends Oct. 16. (Call for exceptions) Tickets: $35-$150 (subject to change)  Information: (213) 972-4400 or centertheatregroup.org  Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes, including one intermission COVID protocol : Masks are required at all times. (Check website for changes.) 

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Charles McNulty is the theater critic of the Los Angeles Times. He received his doctorate in dramaturgy and dramatic criticism from the Yale School of Drama.

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Review: Oklahoma! Takes Us to the Dark Side

• January 13, 2022
• Stages , Theater

Kathy D. Hey

Kathy D. Hey writes creative non-fiction essays. A lifelong Chicagoan, she is enjoying life with her husband, daughter and three dogs in the wilds of Edgewater. When she isn’t at her computer, she is in her garden growing vegetables and herbs for kitchen witchery.

Daniel Fish’s Oklahoma! is a heart-pounding, compelling revival

By Natasha Leake

Greg Hicks (Andrew Carnes), Philip Olagoke (Cord Elam) and Georgina Onuorah (Ado Annie) in Oklahoma!

Oh, what a compelling production. Here we have an inventive take on the original Oklahoma! at London’s Wyndham Theatre. Director Daniel Fish picks familiar songs apart and draws out their shadowy undertones, all while retaining the signature upbeat score and first-class dancing of the musical tour de force. It’s a masterstroke of musical theatre which leaves everyone thinking – and dancing – long after the performance is done.

Little surprise, then, that this is  the play everyone’s talking about. After winning the Tony Award for best musical revival on Broadway, it came to London for seven weeks last year at the Young Vic, where it sold out. Now, it’s already tucked a couple of awards under its belt and is forecast to clean up at the Olivier’s on 2 April.

Sam Steiner’s thought-provoking fringe hit, in which daily dialogue is reduced to the length of a Twitter caption, heads to the West End with a starry double-act who more than prove their acting dexterity

By Annabel Sampson

Anoushka Lucas (Laurey Williams) and Arthur Darvill (Curly McLain) in Oklahoma!

By Harriet Johnston

By Isaac Zamet

By Isaac Bickerstaff

‘There’s a bright golden haze on the meadow’: main character Curly opens the play with his familiar southern accent ringing out across the audience. It’s a plaintive but powerful rendition of  Oh, what a Beautiful Morning.  Arthur Darvill, who plays the character, has a magnetic voice, and a captivating stage presence. His hair flops across his face, his leather riding slacks hang over his jeans as if he’s just come off a horse, and – most interestingly – he strums a modern-day guitar as he sings.  

For the first half of the performance we are treated to the comfortable, original songs of the musical. Curly and Laurey spar over the upcoming ball with an attractive confidence; Curly boasts of his ‘shiny little surrey with a fringe on the top’ to a disbelieving Laurey and Will Parker sings of dancing girls back at Kansas city. Peddler Ali Hakim makes us laugh with his attempts to extricate himself from the love triangle he has somehow found himself in, Aunt Eller is familiarly fiesty. The actors give jaw-dropping performances, their voices are electric. 

Arthur Darvill plays Curly in Oklahoma!

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Electricity runs through the very heart of this musical revival. In the corner of the stage stands a microphone, complete with guitar, which Curly never sings without. Is he being painted as some sort of pop-star pinup heart throb? In the final scene, he appears in a white suit with flared trousers, which feels like a homage to the original King of Pop, Elvis Presley. Overhead, kaleidoscopic party banners flap happily, while coloured fairy lights adorn the roof of the theatre. Is this a homage to the garish colours of pop-art? The result is a striking combination of the rugged Oklahoma territory of 1906, an early 1940s Rogers and Hammerstein musical, and modern-day pop-culture. It’s spellbindingly unique.

What else makes this show original? There is an overwhelming sense of stasis which runs in the background of the first half of the play. All of the cast remains on stage, in character. Sometimes they’re sitting around a large trestle table, sometimes brooding in the background, but all of the time they’re watching others perform. Thus, the songs have a frenetic activity which, despite their cheerful pace, contrasts with the brooding sense running on in the background. 

Arthur Darvill (Curl McLain) and Anoushka Lucas (Laurey Williams) in Oklahoma!

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And there is a literal, bright, golden haze – but not on the meadow. Inside the theatre, the lights never dim, and yellow stage lights shine onto actors and audience with equal voracity. The audience are given a part to play in the performance. Most importantly, we’re not exempt from the sinister plot unfurling before our eyes, which culminates in the second half of the performance through the character of Jud Fry, played unfathomably sensitively by Patrick Vaill. As  Old Judd is Dead is sung by Curly inside Judd’s smokehouse, the stage and audience are submerged in pitch-black darkness, with only a night-vision camera on Judd’s face, along with projection. A single tear runs down his face as he imagines his own death. 

It’s a commentary on mental health, and so much more. Perhaps a nod to the modern-day dark side of social media? Or a literal, zoomed-in look at a character who is normally glossed over in other performances of  Oklahoma . We see him in microscopic detail. Somehow, we pity him despite his manipulative and abusive behaviour. 

Patrick Vaill (Jud Fry), Arthur Darvill (Curl McLain) and James Patrick Davis (Will Parker) in  Oklahoma!

When the final song comes round at a galloping pace, and the familiar words of  Oklahoma!  are pounded out on stage, the original song takes on a new meaning. Mid-way through, Judd is shot by Curly in what almost feels like an execution. As Curly’s face – and Elvis’ white suit – are splattered with blood, the finale is polluted with the dark subtext of unresolved mental health issues, and the harsh, unaccepting society of the deep south in the early 1900s. The final romp to the ‘land we belong to’ in the closing song feels like a vitriolic, territorial howl. It takes on a new meaning with dark currents of colonialism literally splattered across the main character, who is notably a white male. 

James Patrick Davis (Will Parker), Patrick Vaill (Jud Fry) and Rebekah Hinds (Gertie Cummings) in Oklahoma! 

Daniel Fish’s  Oklahoma! is a resounding ‘knockout’, as the posters say. But not quite in the way you might expect: the audience is knocked-out by the force of the play, as subtleties buried within a musical are teased out in a masterfully original way. Therein lies the beauty of a production which has rightly become a box-office sensation. 

Oklahoma! is on now at Wyndham’s Theatre, London; oklahomawestend.com  

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[Review] Revival of “Oklahoma!”: A Wonderfully Weird Life-Changing Musical (4/5 Stars)

DURHAM, NC – A chilly night on March 29th for a beautiful production of Oklahoma! at the Durham Performing Arts Center (DPAC), a Tony award winner for best musical revival.

Arrival And Doors Opening 

The lines were long as everyone scurried to get inside the grand entrance of DPAC. Waiting outside the several floors to get into the auditorium, chit chatter and quiet exchanges took place; everyone was excited to see the new take on Oklahoma! . Many were dressed in suits and dresses, while some chose a casual look. More notable to mention is that the former mayor of Durham, Stephen Schewel , arrived, who, just like everyone else, was anticipating the modernized production of Oklahoma! .

The doors opened at 7 pm, and a vast diversity of individuals made their way inside to claim their sacred seats. The luscious and oval-shaped grand auditorium tinted with maroon seats illuminated the plain center stage; a backdrop of a little farm and the bareness of the wooden tables made the production more original. As the musical began, the lights shone upon the smiling faces of audience members, quietly humming the words along to “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’.” 

A Beautiful Dissatisfaction

After intermission, however, the smiling faces turned into solemn frowns. Many people had left or walked out, repelled by Daniel Fish’s dark and disturbing reinterpretation. Audience members were dissatisfied and confused with the new take on the musical, and whispers of critics nestled their way throughout the auditorium. One woman I sat beside, Cheryl (who was a delight to converse with), expressed her opinion. “This production is challenging. At the time period, this was written, the vernacular was very different. If they are going to modernize the musical, they need to modernize the vernacular as well. What really bugs me is their referral to coolers as baskets.” Although she held many criticisms, she did have a few optimistic pointers for the production. “I like that they incorporate diversity. It’s a nice look on stage to see women and men of different colors. I also like how they emphasize the power of women; women are not subjected to men in this production, which I appreciate.”

Another man I had the privilege to talk to, whose name is unknown, had a more gruesome criticism of the musical. “The darkness was too much; the gunshot terrified me. I was expecting an optimistic musical, but I received pessimism. I know it is to highlight American society right now, but I came to watch something great!”

Younger Viewers Loved It

However, other younger viewers and I had a different experience. We loved the script, the lighting, the abstract dancing, and the horror, which seemed to discourage older audience members from enjoying the music. More importantly, we appreciate the allusion to the mental instability that Jud was suffering from. In this new production of Oklahoma! Fisher creates a disturbing scene that many older audience members didn’t necessarily understand. It was a conversation between Curly, played by Sean Grandillo, and Christopher Bannow as Jud, in the dark. Curly talks to Jud about what his death would be like if Jud hung himself; people who had disliked Jud would all come crying over his grave, begging for forgiveness, and individuals would unite together to mourn his death. Curly states, “We never know if people really love us till we die.” A short abstract clip reflects Jud’s facial expressions in the dark; he seems happy, rejuvenated with the thought of people finally caring about him, and appears to be considering the possibility of suicide. Some audience members didn’t understand the message, and some even laughed in ignorance at Jud’s response to a perceived death. Fish was demonstrating mental illness that overtakes our youthful society; in my college alone in the previous year, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, two people committed suicide on campus. Understanding the signs and symptoms of someone like Jud, who seems to be suffering from a mental illness, can make a difference in someone’s life. 

A young Duke woman, around the age of twenty, had the same opinion as me. She states, “creativity and darkness is something we need to see and be aware of. The world isn’t sunshine of daisies and rainbows. This is real life, and mental illness is there.”

What Is Oklahoma! ?

The new “Oklahoma!” production is not something your grandparents witnessed; it is a rejuvenated version of the classic 1943 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical that keeps the original script. It does a grand job of incorporating gender and racial equality while also drawing awareness to mental health. A unique version of Oklahoma! brings to the stage 21st century influences; actors of different races, sexual orientations, and religions reflect the diversity of American lives. They are costumed in modern clothing— t-shirt, blue bell-bottoms, cowboy hats, and boots. 

The Plot  

Oklahoma! which Rodgers and Hammerstein adapted from Lynn Riggs’s 1931 play, “Green Grow the Lilacs,” has a simple plot: the plot revolves around a cowboy, a farmhand, and a young farm girl. A cowboy named Curly, a handsome and humorous young man wants to take a farm girl, Laurey, to a box social. However, a love triangle persists throughout the musical as Jud Fry, a creepy and mysterious man who happens to be Laurey’s worker, seeks to make her his wife. With his guitar and beautiful melodic hum, a swooning Curly grasps the audience members’ hearts to root for him and Laurey. Jud Fry is dead by the end of the musical, and Laurey is married to Curly. Seems like a romantic, heroic battle where the loving and good moral man wins the beautiful woman, right? Wrong.

The Dark Side of Oklahoma!

Fish’s revival production of Oklahoma! turns Curly ( into a murderer; this loving, sweet, and innocent character audience members fell in love with breaks their hearts. In the original production of Oklahoma! , Jud arrives at the wedding and dies from a knife in a brawl caused by his own fumbling.

However, in Fish’s revival production of Oklahoma! , Jud arrives with a present to the groom at the wedding; he is nervous off-putting, and the audience seems to cling to their seats in anticipation of what he is about to do. He was the bad guy, after all. Curly receives a gun from Jud, who then walks across the stage, practically begging for death. His present, to Curly, was his death. Expecting the humble and kind Curly to put down the gun, blood splatters across the white clothes of the bride and groom; in a swift motion, without hesitation, Jud was shot dead. Although he was a little dark and overbearing, was Jud really the good guy all along? Fish’s revival emphasizes 21st-century dating to portray a message to the audience: we don’t know what others will do. Although they may seem beautiful on the outside, their hearts can be plagued with darkness on the inside.

Early 1900 Oklahoma!

When the production Oklahoma! first premiered on Broadway in 1943, the world was vastly different from the one we live in today. First and foremost, the Civil Rights Movement had not yet occurred; African Americans were still struggling in an endless fight for freedom. Moreover, women in the early 1900s were subjected to a status of inferiority and servitude to men; they were expected to perform household duties and raise children. Unlike men who held jobs in the political sphere of the world, women were confined to domesticity and obedience. However, the world has evolved towards a more equal sphere for races and gender, and the modernized production of Oklahoma! reflected these improvements. 

Evolution of the World: Oklahoma! Matches it

Ado Annie, performed by Sis, was the embodiment of female power. Unlike the early 1900s, in which women were subjected to inferior status, the 21st century has empowered women to be independent self entities entitled to the same rights as men. The production, “Oklahoma!” portrays just that with the boisterous and floozy women character Ado Annie. A character, who would normally be criticized and shamed in the early 1900s for her sleeping around with multiple men, was respected and liked. In the song “Many a New Day,” Aunt Eller, Laurey, Ado Annie, and Gertie sing about women’s empowerment; they endorse the proposition that it is okay to be without a man and that they don’t need to rely on one to be happy. Rather than the man subjecting and toying with the women like they did decades prior to the 21st century, “Oklahoma!” portrays women in a powerful light; it is Ado Annie that is chasing and messing around with different men, unlike men who sought out wives in the past. She holds power in deciding who she wants to marry, unlike women in the early 1900s who were told by their parents whom they should marry. 

Laurey Williams, played by Sasha Hutchings, is the most important character for emphasizing racial equality. As you may have guessed, at the time this musical was produced, cast members in Oklahoma! were white. Sasha Hutchings, performing as Laurey, an African American woman, is the lead role in the romantic feud between Curly and Jud. After years of fighting for the same opportunities as white actors, many are now seeing the changes on and off-Broadway stages. Although these words may not be written for a Black woman, Sasha embodies them and makes the role seem as if it was meant for her. 

I would rate Oklahoma! a 4 out of 5 stars. Even though the production cast new light on gender, sex, and mental illness, I could not ignore the critics of others. Oklahoma! is an uncomfortable but wonderfully weird life-changing musical you won’t want to miss.

Age Requirement

“Please note that all guests require a ticket, regardless of age. Children under the age of 6 are not allowed at this performance. Children must be able to sit quietly in their own seats without disturbing other guests. As a further courtesy to our guests, DPAC recommends one parent or chaperone for every one child in attendance.” ~ DPAC

Tickets start at the price of $26.50 per person and increase by the designated spot of the audience member’s choosing.

Future Show-Times Include:

Thursday, March 31st at 7:30 pm

Friday, April 1st at 8:00 pm

Saturday, April 2nd at 2:00 pm and 8 pm

Sunday, April 3rd at 1:00 pm and 7:00 pm 

Photos: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade

8 thoughts on “ [review] revival of “oklahoma”: a wonderfully weird life-changing musical (4/5 stars) ”.

Review of Oklahoma You definitely have a different perspective. I’m not sure we saw the same musical.

I would have expected a revival to take into account the differences in male-female relationships between the 1950’s and today. As you mention, this version did a grand job of incorporating gender and racial equality. And some of the presentation portrayed some of those differences.

I was concerned when the opening number was so slow — more like a “beautiful mourning” than a “beautiful morning”. The stage, which I read afterwards was originally for a theater-in-the-round, looked like it was designed on a limited budget. A picnic hamper was replaced by a plastic igloo.

The “dance” at the beginning of the second act was the most painful ten minutes of sight and sound that I have experienced at DPAC. The “music” made me cover my ears. One person I talked to afterwards had been a modern dancer and she said that it was the worst she had seen.

The actors gave a flat performance. I can speculate that their morale is way down since it appears about a fifth of the house leaves after the first act. They must feel like they are trapped in the show and will do anything to make it a little more fun. Jud’s comic death (walking a bit after being shot and then lying down) was part of that fun.

The performance took place on April 2nd. If it had been a day earlier, that might have explained the joke.

The performance did provoke discussion. We met a young black woman who had escaped during the “dance” of the 2nd act and was sitting outside waiting for her friends. Her reaction was like ours. We went for a drink afterwards and saw a couple with programs in their hands. It only took a quick “so what?” to establish our common reaction.

I won’t give it a star rating, since I think it’s unrateable.

Having not done any research before the show, I was definitely looking forward to the songs of Oklahoma, I remembered from a high school production. An insert play bill might have clarified what this production was trying to portray…mental health, woman inequality, racial issues, etc…not just a love triangle between a woman, a cowboy and a farm hand and some great music. The lack of scenery changes would have been more acceptable is the use of video technology had been better executed. The black outs and loud music were distracting…and didn’t seem to add value. Was it the skill set of the performers that didn’t bring the production to the standards we have had and come to expect in other DPAC shows? There were some strong voices when just singing but combining with the spoken lines not so powerful. Did the several outburst of a very loud laugh add value? The performer in the long dream ballet did not have the dance skills expected. I’m sure the performers find distracting and discouraging when people walk out as I have read happened in other reviews and even in this performance. We stayed to the end, but the comments we heard when exiting were mostly negative… from a mixture of racial and age attenders. Suggestions: -Add a bi-line to the title Oklahoma, a dark revival -Add an insert play bill to clarify this is a very different take on the Oklahoma of the 40’s-50’s era and keep an open mind.

I’m still processing what I saw yesterday! I will say that the performers were fantastic – that’s absolutely one positive!

The character of Jud has always been mentally ill. I didn’t understand the change of Curly really trying to talk him into suicide.

Ado Annie has always been about female empowerment, to a degree, despite the fact that her father still gets to decide who she marries.

“Laurey’s Ballet” is supposed to be about her struggle to choose between Jud and Curly. Whatever was happening on that stage was NOT that.

And making Jud’s death a cold-blooded murder, with Laurey and Curly covered in blood? Is that a statement about Curly tormenting Jud? Is it meant to symbolize the blood on white settlers’ hands as they expand westward?

My problem with the production is that the director’s message wasn’t at all clear. If it was just meant to be provocative for the sake of being provocative, then it succeeded. If it was meant to be provocative in order to give us something to think about, it succeeded. But if it was meant to convey something, well, I missed the message.

Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein are spinning in the grave This production(I use that word loosely ) was so bad a junior high school would have been 10 times better The audience started walking out after 30 minutes of this torture and at intermission 50% did not come back

This is the worst performance of Oklahoma I have ever seen. It was changed so much, that I did not recognize it. It should have had another name, because it was not the same musical I’ve enjoyed so much. The stage design was poor and it never changed. Sound system was deficient. Dancers needed more training to do a better job. Singers were good, but at times, when using the microphone they were too loud. All the musicians played well. The darker scenes and gunshots were disconcerting. A very disappointing performance.

I’d like to follow up on my previous comments.

I read a review that suggested the director was the one to have the lines spoken without emotion. So the cast was doing their best within that constraint. They did have fun with the parts such as goodbye kissing, arithmetic, laughing and the death scene.

Spoiler alert – Jud dies. In the original, which I just watched, Jud hits Curley and pulls a knife. They get into a fight, and Jud gets stabbed with his own knife.

In this version, Jud gives Curley a gun and then no dialog is exchanged. He backs off ten feet and presents himself to be shot. Curly doesn’t shoot. Jud walks up to Curley and cocks the gun. He backs off again. Curley doesn’t shoot. He starts to walk up again and Curley shoots him. Jud ambles toward the front of the stage, then lies down. A great sight gag.

Another review suggested that almost every word in the original script was followed. Maybe except for “knife”. What this did was cause strange exchanges. At the beginning, Jud is sitting there and Curley says hello. Jud replies and then just sits there. In the original, Jud is walking across the stage and the exchange appears in context.

This was an issue with much of the production. A script is written in the context of the scene. A show written for a scene-less production needs words to set the context. Otherwise the viewer gets lost, as happened several times.

The actors performed admirably considering all these issues.

The performing arts centers who hosted this show really took a risk. Would the number of people leaving after the first act without buying a drink be offset by those buying doubles so they could stand the 2nd act? I speculate the “dance” scene was moved to the 2nd act to reduce the number of people leaving after the 1st.

This was not “Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma” as the playbill reads. This was “Oklahoma” in words only.

As previous reviewers stated, you need truth in advertising.

• Pingback: Meet Sasha Hutchings: Female Lead in 21st Century Revival of Musical "OKLAHOMA!" - Spectacular Magazine

This production was like a college theater arts class project to modernize a classic Broadway musical, and it would have been appropriate as such. The problem is this, though: the time of the musical is still early 1900’s, and events mentioned are from THAT time (e.g., dealing with Alexander Graham Bell’s phone). Race relations in the early 1900’s, especially between a white male and black female, were not what we saw. So, there was a verisimilitude problem. The lines needed to be changed to reflect modern times. The performers were talented, but somehow there was a lack of chemistry between the male and female leads that made a love relationship seem unlikely. Instead of a semi-operatic beefy baritone and lithe soprano we got a latter-day John Denver-with-guitar mixed with a young I’m-Every-Woman Whitney Houston. The beautiful, melodic songs that we treasured and wanted to hear as written and orchestrated were treated in a way that cheapened them—it was like if someone sang the Star Spangled Banner with a kazoo or Nessum Dorma with a banjo. The “ballet” looked like someone having a seizure during a deafening guitar lead, and this prompted many of the audience to leave at this time. In summary, I would not try to modernize a classic musical like this because it turned into a mess.

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‘Oklahoma!’ review

• Theatre, Musicals
• 4 out of 5 stars
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Time Out says

Transferring to the West End, this radical take on Rodgers & Hammerstein is a dark, wild, sexy ride

Interview: Anoushka Lucas, the struggling singer-songwriter who accidentally became the star of ‘Sexy Oklahoma!’

When I started hearing salacious rumours online about a New York production of the Rodger & Hammerstein classic nicknamed ‘Sexy Oklahoma!’, I knew I had to see it, seduced by the promise of a staging that would  strip all the gingham kitsch and yeehawing jollity from this 1943 musical.  

I was raised on Golden Age movie musicals, but was disillusioned with their sanitised aesthetic, with the Technicolor sheen that the friends I attempted to convert had bristled at.  Since then, director Daniel Fish’ s massively hyped production has soared from New York's St Ann's Warehouse to Broadway, before being remounted (with some original cast in place) at London's Young Vic. A West End victory lap was inevitable. And I was chomping at the bit (to use an appropriately Western metaphor) to finally experience it. It turns out that when people say ‘Sexy Oklahoma!’, they really mean it. Not because this production’s full of rippling biceps or heaving bosoms – or even actual sex – but because it’s an edgy, rock ‘n’ roll depiction of a community whose only way to cut loose is by having sex or firing a gun. And they do plenty of both. With sex so firmly in the foreground, everything about this story shifts. In traditional productions, boy-crazy farm girl Ado Annie is pure comic relief. When she sings ‘I'm just a girl who can't say no!’, it's a straightforward excuse for some jolly old-timey slut-shaming. But here, Georgina Onuorah plays an Annie whose desires can't be so easily laughed at: she tenderly cradles her more prim and proper friend Laurey (Anoushka Lucas) in her arms as she sings about loving that's ‘sweeter than cream’, centimetres away from a kiss. And this Laurey is rapt, not judgemental. Laurey’s own desire is meant to be reserved for all-American good guy Curly, who traditionally easily sees off the sexual threat from brooding farmhand Jud. But here, that central love triangle is a true three-way. Arthur Darvill’s Curly is a strange, nervy character who kind of hates, kind of is obsessed with his rival: Patrick Vaill's mesmerising, vulnerable Jud. And Laurey wants him, too; her eventual wedding to Curly is soaked in blood and regret. Even before this production's resolutely unhappy ending, it's miles away from the kind of sickly fare West End audiences are so often fed on. Visually, it’s sparse and determinedly unpretty, Wyndham Theatre’s gilded auditorium contrasting oddly with a stage lined with blonde plywood and guns (an echo of Jamie Lloyd's iconoclastic MDF-filled ‘The Seagull’ last year). Its flattened performances stifle some of the original’s laughs - here, trader Ali Hakim is de-exoticised, with Stavros Demetraki delivering his lines with monotone detachment, not ‘comedy’ foreignness. And its dream ballet is closer to a nightmare, performer  Marie-Astrid Mence dancing through green light and vast billows of smoke to the sound of brilliant orchestrator Daniel Kluger's jagged, shredded take on this musical’s score. Cowboy boots fall to the stage around her, like the detritus of some kind of vast farmhand orgy in the heavens above her.

Some audience members might feel cheated of their uplifting Western jolly but if you love ‘Oklahoma!’ enough to seek out this production, you're bound to be at the very least fascinated by the strange brutality it reveals at the heart of its story. It's a reminder that although ’40s social conservatism stopped Rodgers & Hammerstein from referencing sex directly, it didn't stop them from using lust as the engine that powers their musical. And if you don't know ‘Oklahoma!’? Go, and hear its deathlessly brilliant melodies tainted by the popping of beer ringpulls or Nirvana-esque vocal fatalism. Maybe you’ll even want to seek out the peppier but magical originals, afterwards. 

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Radically reimagined revival of musical 'Oklahoma!' sweeps into Oklahoma City

Barbara Walsh was a 25-year-old aspiring Broadway star when she got a beautiful feeling that everything was going her way.  

"My first job when I moved to New York was the national tour of 'Oklahoma!' ... It was incredibly illuminating and a wonderful experience," Walsh recalled.  

"So, between that and this, 'Oklahoma!' (is) my life." 

After performing as part of the ensemble on the 1980s tour, the Tony-nominated actor has come sweeping back to "Oklahoma!," playing community matriarch Aunt Eller in the radical new revival of Rodgers & Hammerstein's iconic musical. 

"One might call it audacious to present a classic staple ... which is so beloved and so well-known, and to mix it up in the way that we have here in this production," Walsh said by phone from the road in Chicago.  

"But my feeling is that the audacity is a good thing if it's eye opening, if it's perplexing, if it brings up new questions about humanity and about society." 

More: U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo named artist in residence for Tulsa's new Bob Dylan Center

Although director Daniel Fish's reimagined "Oklahoma!" won best revival of a musical at the 2019 Tony Awards, the show could face tough crowds as the tour plays its Oklahoma City dates Jan. 25-30 at the Civic Center as part of OKC Broadway's 2021-2022 season. 

"I think it's going to be met by mixed reviews. We're fully aware of that. But our job as the (local) Broadway presenter is to bring the variety to the patrons and let them decide," said OKC Broadway General Manager Elizabeth Gray.  

"Not a single word and not a single lyric has changed. But it's just a completely different artistic interpretation of the musical."

'A sense of pride for the state' 

"Oklahoma!" was a smash when it made its Broadway bow in 1943, setting up a record-setting five-year run of 2,212 performances and earning a special Pulitzer Prize for its now-legendary creators, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II.  

"It was revolutionary: This was the first time ever that the music in a play served to advance the storyline. It wasn't just you had a play, and they would go off and do a side number. The music was integrated into the plot," said Oklahoma Historical Society Executive Director Trait Thompson.

Based on the play “Green Grow the Lilacs" by Claremore writer Lynn Riggs, the popular production also became the first Broadway show to record an original cast album, which made buoyant numbers like "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'," "The Surrey with the Fringe on Top" and "I Cain't Say No" even more accessible. In 1953, future Gov. George Nigh introduced legislation to make the soaring title theme the state song.  

More: Top tips for attending Oklahoma City's live shows during the COVID-19 pandemic

Beset by the Dust Bowl, Great Depression and World War II, Thompson said the musical's success brought "a sense of pride for the state."

"It was really something that portrayed the state in a positive way," Thompson said. "The title song is a positive song. It's a fun song. It's a song that you just can't help but sing along with, so it was really important to our state." 

'Meant to take us to places that we might not normally go' 

But the story includes darkness and conflict, too. Set in Indian Territory, the show centers on a love triangle between farm girl Laurey and her two suitors, cocky yet affable cowboy Curly and solitary, troubled farmhand Jud. 

Instead of spotlighting big musical numbers, Fish's version focuses on the story and swaps the original score's brassy sound for a country band. 

"The whole song 'Pore Jud Is Daid' is about Curly trying to convince Jud to commit suicide. That's not a happy moment. ... But art is one of those things that's meant to be emotional. It's meant to take us to places that we might not normally go on our own because sometimes those are scary places," said Thompson, who hasn't seen the new revival.  

"Art is not something that's typically put out there and then it stays static ... and 'Oklahoma!' has got this storyline that resonates no matter what generation might be watching." 

More: Broadway actor Sasha Hutchings 'Cain't Say No' to returning to Oklahoma with 'Oklahoma!' tour

'It literally is upsetting ideas that we have about America' 

Although she attended Oklahoma City University, Sasha Hutchings  said she couldn't see herself in "Oklahoma!" when she started learning about the musical and the Oscar-winning 1955 movie adaptation.  

"I saw something I wanted to do. ... I was a capable dancer, and I loved theater. I loved the idea that I could tell stories, and I was excited about embarking upon that educational journey at school. But I didn't see myself in the works that we were studying," said the 2011 OCU graduate. 

"I'm a fair-skinned Black woman. ... There were very narrow ideas of who I could be and how I would be seen by the industry."  

But Fish's "Oklahoma!" revolutionized the show's casting:  Ali Stroker became the first wheelchair user to win a Tony when she garnered the award for best featured actress in a musical, and Rebecca Naomi Jones became the first woman of color to play Laurey on Broadway.  

An understudy for the Broadway run, Hutchings is playing Laurey on the national tour.

"As much as people may or may not want to admit it, it can be very upsetting to see the version of 'Oklahoma!' that we are bringing to the stage, because it literally is upsetting ideas that we have about America," said Hutchings, who also has appeared in the Broadway hits "Hamilton," "My Fair Lady" and "Motown."  

"The truth is, Black women have been a part of American history since the very beginning — as have Black men, as have people of all colors and all sexualities. ... We just refuse to see them."

'It's going to do what great theater does'  

As "Oklahoma!" nears its 80th birthday, producer Eva Price continues to be impressed with the show's longevity. In 2015, she got an email about Fish's reimagined version playing a summer festival at Bard College in upstate New York, and once she made the drive to see it, she couldn't say no.  

"Daniel’s vision for the show had within it these relevant, topical, current themes ... like what it means to be a feminist right now, what it means to be an outsider right now, what frontier vigilante justice means and how it’s actually existing," Price told The Oklahoman.  

"When people ask about the reimagination in our production, I say, 'Isn't Shakespeare reimagined?' That's what makes great, classic text classic is that it can reflect the contemporary — and that's what our 'Oklahoma!' does."

With Price as producer, the show played Broadway in spring 2019 for a limited run that was extended into January 2020 due to its popularity.  

Price's dream was to open the national tour of "Oklahoma!" in OKC in fall 2020, but those plans had to be scrapped due to the COVID-19 pandemic . The long-awaited tour launched in Minneapolis last November.

 "It's going to do what great theater does, which is to cause conversation. ... I'm excited for new audiences to come, because to them, they've seen the traditional 'Oklahoma!' a thousand times," Price said.  

"These last few years, we've been constantly challenged and reinventing ourselves. ... Why not take the risk and take the challenge to experience something that's reinvented and not just comfortable?" 

'Maybe sometimes you do a disservice to the original' 

Max Weitzenhoffer, a Tony-winning producer based in Oklahoma, said he has concerns about the revival, especially since many Oklahomans haven't had the chance to see a professional production of the classic "Oklahoma!" It's been 40 years since the last Actors Equity tour took the title across North America; locally, Lyric Theatre brought it to the Civic Center for a weeklong run in summer 2015.  

"From the point of view of being in the business for 60 years or so ... I'm a bit tired of somebody coming around and tinkering with something," said Weitzenhoffer, who has seen video excerpts but not a full performance of the revival. 

"I have a problem with when you try to reimagine a show to have a point of view that wasn't the point of view of the creative people that did it originally. I think maybe sometimes you do a disservice to the original." 

Weitzenhoffer, whose name is on the University of Oklahoma's musical theater school, said he was a close friend of the late Alfred Drake, who originated the role of Curly on Broadway.   

"This is a pretty special place ... and the original was a celebration of Oklahoma," Weitzenhoffer said.  

'Exposing the humanity in these characters' 

With her experience performing on both the classic and reimagined tours of "Oklahoma!," Walsh said she feels the new version celebrates the show's masterful writing by stripping away the musical theater gloss.  

"It's exposing the humanity in these characters — the good, the bad and the ugly — and I find that arresting," she said.  

"One thing I really frown upon is musicals that are revived again and again, the same and the same and the same. What is the point? ... It's important for the beast of musical theater to evolve — as human beings must." 

'Oklahoma!'  

When : Jan. 25-30.  

Where : Civic Center Music Hall, 201 N Walker.  

COVID-19 protocols: All patrons must provide proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 PCR test taken within 72 hours prior to entering the venue. All patrons must wear masks in the venue except when actively eating or drinking.    

Tickets and information:   https://www.okcbroadway.com .  

Big changes come sweeping down the plain in radically reimagined ‘Oklahoma!’

It’s sultry and saucy and silly and serious and sometimes, especially at the end, so standoffish that it feels like it’s slapping you.

Sasha Hutchings stars as Laurey and Sean Grandillo portrays Curly in the national tour of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!”

Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade

The new touring production of “Oklahoma!” is not your grandparents’ version of the lush, ultra-classic 1943 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical about the great future of America. Or your parents’ version. Or perhaps, your version. But it’s extraordinary in every sense of the word.

It’s wonderfully weird and weirdly wonderful. It’s radical while remaining true to the text of the original and forcing us to see — or hear — it anew. It’s dark — sometimes literally as blackouts and floods of dark colors are not uncommon. It’s also very funny, injecting the romantic comedy components with unending sexual tension expressing itself in insults.

It’s… everything, except ordinary.

The musical, which takes place in 1906 Oklahoma, as the territory is on the verge of statehood and its (supposedly) glorious American future of limitless possibility, is set by director Daniel Fish and scenic designer Laura Jellinek in a purely theatrical, timeless but contemporary-ish space, something like a bright beer hall or public picnic. The cast members hang around the picnic tables even when they’re not in the scenes, drinking Bud Light, occasionally shucking corn, often stomping to the beat of the songs to energize the festivities. It’s a party. But there are gun racks on the wall. With a lot of guns. A lot.

Many of the scenes are played with an emotional distance, with the actors — all superb — seeming to just say the lines without much inflection, and yet still capturing their characters. Interestingly, it’s both more artificial and more authentic simultaneously.

Jud Fry (Christopher Bannow, center), Laurey (Sasha Hutchings) and Curley (Sean Grandillo) cross paths in “Oklahoma!”

The full personalities of the characters and performers emerge more forcefully when they sing. The songs — and oh! does this show have the songs! — sound completely different than prior takes but come across brilliantly. A traditional-radical production would turn the tunes into contemporary country, but here the pedal string guitar and the rest of the seven-member onstage band invest “Oh What a Beautiful Mornin’ ” and “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top” and the rest of one of best scores in history with a compellingly wobbly, eerie twang.

On Broadway, where this production won the Tony Award for best revival, the show was performed in-the-round. Re-staged for proscenium houses, the backdrop depicts a barn and a farmhouse amidst a sprawl of empty land awaiting planting — in a traditional version, that would surely be painted with corn stalks as high as an elephant’s eye. The proportions of the buildings are purposely flattened in a way that evokes American Gothic.

The lighting and staging of the tour place the focus even more on Laurey as the pure center of this tale. Played and sung skillfully by Sasha Hutchings, who understudied the role on Broadway, Laurey seems to be pondering often, seeming to wonder if something might be very, very wrong. She’s drawn to her rightful love interest Curly (Sean Grandillo), here a classic singing cowboy in the Roy Rogers tradition but with cute hair out of “High School Musical.” But she’s also both drawn to and repulsed by hired hand Jud Fry, who in this version is both the villain and the bullied, deeply damaged victim. As Jud, Christopher Bannow brings even more of a school shooter vibe than the character had on Broadway, urgently emphasizing Jud’s seething resentment at others’ sense of superiority.

Sis stars as Ado Annie in “Oklahoma!” now playing at the CIBC Theatre.

I wondered how they’d recast the actress Ali Stroker, who won the Tony for playing the naïve-but-naughty farmgirl Ado Annie in her wheelchair. Here, Ado Annie is played by Sis, a Black transgender woman wearing a curly blonde wig, who has the audience fully on her side from the minute she physically tosses around her much smaller love interest Will Parker (an endearing Hennessy Winkler).

If you’re not sure about all this — and it has, fairly, been satirized as “Woke-lahoma” — you should at least go for the first act. You’d still feel like you had a full evening and can leave, which people do, mostly feeling optimistic about the future.

The second act explodes all the Americana myths underneath the story even further, while clearly revealing that this undercurrent was there all along. That’s what’s shocking.

It starts by substituting the “Dream Ballet” with a solo modern dance, performed by Gabrielle Hamilton, from the original Broadway cast. It’s beautiful and expressive, alternating between flowing movement and gyrating pain that instantly brings to mind someone being shot.

The ending of this “Oklahoma!” manages to be both shattering and enlightening, turning what used to be a happy ending into a view of how our criminal justice system favors the powerful.

The last number, a reprise of the title song, feels as if everyone is singing the song of optimism so hard because they’re trying to purge their underlying trauma.

In this version, it’s clear that despite the lyric saying so, Oklahoma is not OK.

Broadway Review: ‘Oklahoma!’

A dark and dangerous directorial vision presents this classic treasure by Rodgers & Hammerstein in a fresh but far from sunny new light.

By Marilyn Stasio

Marilyn Stasio

Theater Critic

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In Broadway ‘s new “ Oklahoma! ,” the audience is just a pounding heartbeat away from Daniel Fish’s revisionist treatment of this iconic American musical. There’s still “a bright golden haze on the meadow” in the 1943 classic by Rodgers and Hammerstein — but here there are also fully stocked gun racks up on the walls, just to remind us how the West was really won.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that director Fish has deconstructed this beloved warhorse (which was a groundbreaker in its own day, it should be remembered): Nowadays, I think they drum you out of the Directors Guild if you direct a classic the way it was written. The wonder of this production is that so much of the joy and optimism of the original work still shines bright through the darkness.

The most dramatic deviation from tradition is the sound. Stripped of all the brass, Richard Rodgers’ music no longer has that distinctive Broadway sound. Rather, as played by a modest seven-piece string orchestra (suited and booted as if for a hoedown), the familiar melodies now sound more like country-western songs. Music director Nathan Koci did the vocal arrangements, and the singers provide the twang.

The sun still shines bright (the lighting is the work of Scott Zielinski) on the sweeping prairies of the Oklahoma Territory, poised on the verge of statehood in 1907, and there’s no cow dung on anybody’s boots. (Terese Wadden designed the purty costumes). But the production style is decidedly naturalistic, with a strong undercurrent of violence. In this context, the killing that ends the show is no facile deus ex machina, but a real statement about the making of America and the settling of the Wild West.

Just as blood keeps flooding these fields of golden corn, the sunny characters also have their dark side — or at least a bit of shade to their natural goodness. Curly, the all-American good-guy hero played by the personable Damon Daunno, is a lot more seductive than the usual well-scrubbed depiction of that lovesick cowpoke. He makes his “Surrey with the Fringe on Top” sound like a tune out of a French boudoir.

Curly’s dearly beloved, the virginal Laurey, also seems more overtly sexual in Rebecca Naomi Jones’s luscious performance. The way she sings “Out of My Dreams” could drive the poor guy crazy with lust, and when these two team up on “People Will Say We’re in Love,” there’s nothing innocent about it.

As for Jud Fry, he’s always been a predatory stalker and something of a menace.  But here, Patrick Vaill plays him with such authentic sexual longing, he doesn’t seem half creepy, and we honestly feel for him in both “Pore Jud” and “Lonely Room.”

This isn’t a case of redefining a character but of acknowledging a character’s secret self. It’s no gimmick, then, but a stroke of directorial invention to play some scenes in complete darkness — the better to allow that private self to step out from the shadows and declare itself. In that spirit, Fish exposes those sexual passions that are kept firmly repressed in traditional productions. (In this version, Curly and Laurey are free to enjoy some candid make-out sessions.) The only failure with this let-it-all-hang-out directorial style is the Dream Ballet, which is supposed to hint delicately of the lovers’ yearnings but is here allowed to go on ad nauseam.

None of this is to say that every element in this show needs a fresh airing. Ado Annie is man-crazy, and no act of literary deconstruction is about to change that. Happily, Ali Stroker’s performance is full of fun.  Whirling and twirling in her wheelchair, she’s a darling dervish, and her singing (“I Cain’t Say No”) is an invitation to smile. As Will Parker, James Davis makes a good romantic match for Stroker’s bubbly Annie (“All er Nuthin’”), and Will Brill is hilarious as Ali Hakim, the quick-witted peddler who fixes the picnic-basket auction.

Mary Testa’s earth-motherly Aunt Eller keeps the more rambunctious characters grounded even as she oversees the cooking of the chili and cornbread served to the audience at intermission. It’s a corny touch, but a nice balance of lightness for the darkness that makes this ambitious revival a winner.

More Broadway: 

Circle in the Square; 651 seats; $169.50 top. Opened April 7, 2019. Reviewed April 4. Running time: TWO HOURS, 40 MIN.

• Production: A presentation by Eva Price, Level Forward, Abigail Disney, Barbara Manocherian & Carl Moellenberg, James L. Nederlander, David Mirvish, Mickey Liddell & Robert Ahrens, BSL Enterprises & Magicspace Entertainment, Berlind Productions, John Gore Organization, Cornice Productions, Bard Fisher / R. Gold, LAMF / J. Geller, T. Narang / ZKM Media, R/F/B/V Group, Araca / IPN, St. Ann’s Warehouse and Tamar Climan of the Bard Summerscape production originally developed, produced, and premiered at the Richard B. Fisher Center of the Performing Art at Bard College, of a musical in two acts with music by Richard Rodgers and book & lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, based on the play “Green Grow the Lilacs” by Lynn Riggs and original choreography by Agnes De Mille.
• Crew: Directed by Daniel Fish. Sets, Laura Jellinek; costumes, Terese Wadden; lighting, Scott Zielinski; sound, Drew Levy; projections, Joshua Thorson; special effects, Jeremy Chernick; production stage manager, James D. Latus.
• Cast: Will Brill, Anthony Cason, Damon Daunno, James Davis, Gabrielle Hamilton, Rebecca Naomi Jones, Will Mann, Mallory Portnoy, Ali Stroker, Mitch Tebo, Mary Testa, Patrick Vaill.

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Review: A Smashing ‘Oklahoma!’ Is Reborn in the Land of Id

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By Ben Brantley

• April 7, 2019

How is it that the coolest new show on Broadway in 2019 is a 1943 musical usually regarded as a very square slice of American pie? The answer arrives before the first song is over in Daniel Fish’s wide-awake, jolting and altogether wonderful production of “Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!,” which opened on Sunday night at the Circle in the Square Theater .

“Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’” is the title and the opening line of this familiar number, a paean to a land of promisingly blue skies and open spaces. But Curly, the cowboy who sings it, isn’t cushioned by the expected lush orchestrations. Nor is the actor playing him your usual solid slab of beefcake with a strapping tenor.

As embodied by the excellent Damon Daunno, this lad of the prairies is wiry and wired, so full of unchanneled sexual energy you expect him to implode. There’s the hint of a wobble in his cocky strut and voice.

Doing his best to project a confidence he doesn’t entirely feel, to the accompaniment of a down-home guitar, he seems so palpably young. As is often true of big boys with unsettled hormones, he also reads as just a little dangerous.

He’s a lot like the feisty, ever-evolving nation he’s so proud to belong to. That would be the United States of America, then and now.

Making his Broadway debut as a director, Mr. Fish has reconceived a work often seen as a byword for can-do optimism as a mirror for our age of doubt and anxiety. This is “Oklahoma!” for an era in which longstanding American legacies are being examined with newly skeptical eyes.

Such a metamorphosis has been realized with scarcely a changed word of Oscar Hammerstein II’s original book and lyrics. This isn’t an act of plunder, but of reclamation. And a cozy old friend starts to seem like a figure of disturbing — and exciting — depth and complexity.

Mr. Fish’s version isn’t the first “Oklahoma!” to elicit the shadows from within the play’s sunshine. Trevor Nunn and Susan Stroman’s interpretation for London’s National Theater of nearly two decades ago , while more traditionally staged, also scaled up the disquieting erotic elements.

But this latest incarnation goes much further in digging to a core of fraught ambivalence. To do so, it strips “Oklahoma!” down to its skivvies, discarding the picturesque costumes and swirling orchestrations, and revealing a very human body that belongs to our conflicted present as much as it did to 1943 or to 1906, the year in which the show (based on Lynn Riggs’s “Green Grow the Lilacs”) takes place.

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Laura Jellinek’s set suggests a small-town community center that might double as a polling station, decorated with festive banners, colored lights — and a full arsenal of guns on the walls. It’s made clear that we the audience are part of this community. The house lights stay on for much of the show, in a homogenizing brightness, that is occasionally and abruptly changed for pitch darkness. (Scott Zielinski is the first-rate lighting designer.)

There’s chili cooking on the refectory tables onstage, for the audience’s consumption at intermission. A seven-member hootenanny-style band sits in plain view. The well-known melodies they play have been reimagined — by the brilliant orchestrator and arranger Daniel Kluger — with the vernacular throb and straightforwardness of country and western ballads.

The cast members — wearing a lot of good old, form-fitting denim (Terese Wadden did the costumes) — are just plain folks. Singing with conversational ease, they occasionally flirt and joke with the audience seated on either side of the stage. We are all, it would appear, in this together.

Though the cast has been whittled down to 11 speaking parts (and one dancer), the key characters are very much present. They include our scrapping leading lovers, Curly McLain and Laurey Williams (Rebecca Naomi Jones); their comic counterparts, Will Parker (James Davis) and Ado Annie (Ali Stroker); that bastion of homespun wisdom and stoicism, Aunt Eller (Mary Testa) and the womanizing peddler Ali Hakim (Will Brill).

Oh, I almost forgot poor old Jud Fry (Patrick Vaill), the slightly, well, weird handyman who’s sweet, in a sour way, on Laurey. Everybody forgets Jud, or tries to. Not that this is possible, with Mr. Vaill lending a charismatic, hungry loneliness to the part that’s guaranteed to haunt your nightmares.

These people — in some cases nontraditionally yet always perfectly cast — intersect much as they usually do in “Oklahoma!” They court and spark, fight and reunite. They also show off by picking up guitars and microphones and dancing like prairie bacchantes. (John Heginbotham did the spontaneous-feeling choreography.) They use household chores, like shucking corn, to memorably annotative effect.

Ms. Stroker’s boy-crazy, country siren-voiced Ado Annie, who rides a wheelchair as if it were a prize bronco, and Mr. Davis’s deliciously dumb Will emanate a blissful endorphin haze. Mr. Brill is a refreshingly unmannered Ali Hakim, and Ms. Testa is a splendid, wryly authoritative Aunt Eller.

But there’s an abiding tension. This is especially evident in Ms. Jones’s affectingly wary Laurey, who regards her very different suitors, Curly and Jud, with a confused combination of desire and terror.

That her fears are not misplaced becomes clear in an encounter in Jud’s dank hovel of a home. Curly sings “Pore Jud,” in which he teasingly imagines his rival’s funeral with an ominous breathiness.

The scene occurs in darkness, with a simulcast video in black and white of the two men face to face. (Joshua Thorson did the projection design.) And the lines between sex and violence, already blurred in this gun-toting universe, melt altogether.

I first saw Mr. Fish’s “Oklahoma!” at Bard College in 2015 , and again at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn last year. It was an exciting work from the get-go, but it just keeps getting better. The performances are looser and bigger; they’re Broadway-size now, with all the infectious exuberance you expect from a great musical.

At the same time, though, this production reminds us that such raw energy can be harnessed to different ends, for ill as well as for good. In the earlier versions, I had problems with its truly shocking conclusion — the scene that takes the most liberties with the original. In its carefully retooled rendering, it’s disturbing for all the right reasons.

The other significant change here involves the dream ballet, which in this version begins the second act and has been newly varied and paced. It is performed by one dancer (the exquisite Gabrielle Hamilton) with a shaved head and a glittering T-shirt that reads “Dream Baby Dream.”

What she does is a far cry from the same sequence as immortalized by Agnes de Mille, the show’s legendary original choreographer. But on its own, radically reconceptualized terms, it achieves the same effect.

As she gallops, slithers and crawls the length of the stage, casting wondering and seductive glances at the front row, Ms. Hamilton comes to seem like undiluted id incarnate, a force that has always been rippling beneath the surface here.

She’s as stimulating and frightening — and as fresh — as last night’s fever dream. So is this astonishing show.

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Oklahoma! review – an invigorating take on Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic

Young Vic, London This modern, sexy and unsettling show injects thrills into a familiar musical, making it feel newly minted

H ow to rewrite Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic musical without changing a word? It turns out all you need do is make us really watch, and really listen. In immersing the audience in the action (with some spectators sat at stage-side tables) and highlighting tricky scenes and characters that are often hastily brushed over, directors Daniel Fish and Jordan Fein have created a modern, sexy and unsettling show . And as for the music? The score sounds so revitalised it might’ve been written yesterday.

With the lights on full glare and the modern-dressed ensemble cast sat on stage throughout, there’s the livewire feeling of a read-through, as if the actors are approaching the book and music for the very first time. Nothing is sacred. Everything is up for grabs.

The physicality and proximity of this production make us think about the show differently. During the big ensemble numbers, it’s possible to turn your head and tune into a different song line. It’s our choice, it seems, whom we listen to. At the end of the showpiece numbers, you can hear the actors panting. Everything that is beautiful comes at a cost.

Arthur Darvill and Anoushka Lucas are both talented musicians and it’s when they sing that their characters – young Laurey Williams and cowboy Curly McLain – come alive. But it’s the supporting roles that make the strongest impression. Marisha Wallace electrifies as the frisky Ado Annie, who she transforms with her huge voice and commanding presence from a comedy sidekick into something much more savvy and meaningful.

Patrick Vaill compels as outsider Jud Fry – more melancholy than menacing. Pore Jud is Daid is performed in pitch black with Vaill’s face filmed, projected and magnified across the back wall. It’s a haunting sight, and as his huge eyes flicker and wince there’s something in his filmed despair that very subtly brings to mind cyberbullying.

It doesn’t all work and there are moments, particularly during the second half and its rejigged and highly stylised ending, when the innovations risk causing distraction. But this is still a brave and invigorating show that effortlessly unearths the ugliness that has always glimmered beneath Oklahoma!’s beautiful morning.

At the Young Vic, London , until 25 June

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Everything you need to know about the ‘Oklahoma!’ revival in the West End

From how to get Oklahoma! tickets to when to see Oklahoma! at the Wyndham’s Theatre, here’s your ultimate guide to the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical.

There's a bright golden haze on the meadow! We've got a beautiful feeling that everything's going our way, as Oklahoma! heads to London. In Daniel Fish's Oklahoma! revival, audiences can see the corn as high as an elephant's eye in this stripped-back production. Even though the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical is over 75 years old, this production is a daring theatrical feat. Discover why you need to see Oklahoma! in London in 2023.

Book Oklahoma! tickets on London Theatre.

What is Oklahoma! about?

Based on Lynn Rigg's 1931 play, Green Grow the Lilacs , and set at the turn of the 20th century, Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! musical follows cowboy Curly and outsider Jud as they aim to woo farmgirl Laurey. There's geographical debates too, as the state lines are drawn up. Can the communities come together in the new state of Oklahoma?

Where is Oklahoma! playing?

The Oklahoma! musical plays at the Wyndham’s Theatre in the West End. The Wyndham’s Theatre is a central London venue located on Leicester Square. Previous shows at the Wyndham’s Theatre include Life of Pi and Leopoldstadt , both Olivier-winning Best Plays.

How long is Oklahoma! in the West End?

The Oklahoma! running time is 2 hours and 50 minutes, including a 15-minute interval. Matinee performances begin at 2:00pm and will finish at 4:50pm. Evening performances begin at 7:30pm and will end at 10:20pm. Find out more about running times of West End shows.

What days is Oklahoma! playing?

Oklahoma! plays eight performances a week at the Wyndham’s Theatre. Evening performances take place daily from Monday through Saturday. Matinee performances take place on Wednesday and Saturday. For the complete performance schedule and show times, please visit the Oklahoma! page to learn more.

When did Oklahoma! premiere?

Oklahoma! premiered at the St. James Theatre on Broadway on 31 Mar. 1943. Oklahoma! didn’t receive any Tony Awards, as the first Tony Awards ceremony took place in 1947. However, Rodgers and Hammerstein did walk away with a coveted Pulitzer Prize.

The show played 2,212 performances on Broadway, closing on 29 May 1948. Subsequent Broadway revivals of Oklahoma! took place in 1951, 1979, 2002, and the 2019 Broadway revival.

Oklahoma! brought the Indian Territory to the West End in 1947, and played for 1,543 performances at Theatre Royal Drury Lane. Subsequent West End revivals of Oklahoma! took place in 1980, and 2002.

Who wrote the Oklahoma! musical?

Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II penned their debut musical Oklahoma! together. Oklahoma! transformed modern musical theatre forevermore, as it was one of the earliest "book musicals" — a type of musical that utilises the songs in its story.

Other Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals include South Pacific , The King and I , and The Sound of Music . Find out more about Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals.

Oklahoma! Characters

During Oklahoma! , you’ll discover the lives of farmers, cowboys, and everyone in between. Join the territorial dwellers at a monumental time in history and see what happens when people from all walks of life come together. Read on to find out more about the main characters you will see on stage in Oklahoma! in London.

Aunt Eller : Aunt Eller is a respected woman in her community. She owns the farmstead and many people look up to her for advice and guidance. She’s often called upon to keep the peace between different communities, but will always have her eye open to help her niece, Laurey. Territory folks should stick together after all!

Laurey : Aunt Eller’s niece, Laurey, is a young, independent woman who wants to grow up and make her own decisions in a daunting world. Cowboy Curly and farmhand Jud vie for her affection, but Laurey finds it difficult to decide who to spend the rest of her life with.

Curly : Curly considers himself to be the best cowboy in all the land. As he sings in “Oh What A Beautiful Mornin’,” everything is going his way, but when he comes across Jud Fry, can he win Laurey’s heart?

Jud : Jud Fry is aunt Eller and Laurey’s farmhand. Although he lives in a reputable farmstead, his smokehouse is anything but presentable. Jud's a social outcast too, and few people spend time with him, but can Jud earn Laurey's respect?

Ado Annie : Ado Annie sees herself as an independent and headstrong woman. But she’s tied to Will Parker. So when Ali Hakim strolls into town and takes her to the Box Social, who will Ado Annie stay with?

Will Parker : Will Parker is a simple young man who is in love with Ado Annie. When audiences first meet him, he’s just returned from the Kansas City fair where he’s seen a new way of life. Can he win Ado Annie’s hand?

There’s plenty of supporting characters in Oklahoma! , including Ali Hakim, Gertie Cummings, and Andrew Carnes.

Who stars in Oklahoma! in the West End?

The Oklahoma! West End cast will feature many of the Young Vic cast. The Oklahoma! cast features Arthur Darvill as Curly McClain, Anoushka Lucas as Laurey Williams, Liza Sadovy as Aunt Eller, Patrick Vaill as Jud Fry, James Patrick Davis as Will Parker, Stavros Demetraki as Ali Hakim, Greg Hicks as Andrew Carnes, Rebekah Hinds as Gertie Cummings, Raphael Bushay as Mike, and Marie-Astrid Mence as the Lead Dancer.

Georgina Onourah will play Ado Annie, with Phillip Olagoke as Cord Elam, with an ensemble including Andrew Berlin, Arthur Boan, Shani Cantor, Anna-Maria de Freitas, George Maddison, Brianna Ogunbawo, Finlay Paul, Helen K Wint. Read more about the Oklahoma! cast.

Two Oklahoma! Broadway cast members reprise their roles in London: Patrick Vaill as Jud Fry, and James Davis as Will Parker.

Oklahoma! Songs

Even though Oklahoma! was Rodgers and Hammerstein’s first musical, they definitely made their mark in the Broadway world with the songs. Throughout Oklahoma! , you’ll hear songs including “Oh, What A Beautiful Mornin’,” “I Cain’t Say No,” and an 11-minute dream ballet. Oklahoma! also features “People Will Say We’re In Love,” which was also said to be a favourite song of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip. Here’s all the songs in Oklahoma! :

"Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'" – Curly "The Surrey with the Fringe on Top" – Curly, Laurey, and Aunt Eller "Kansas City" – Will Parker, Aunt Eller "I Cain't Say No" – Ado Annie "Many a New Day" – Laurey "It's a Scandal! It's a Outrage!" – Ali Hakim "People Will Say We're in Love" – Curly and Laurey "Pore Jud Is Daid" – Curly and Jud "Lonely Room" – Jud

"Out of My Dreams"/"Dream Ballet" – Laurey and Dream Figures "The Farmer and the Cowman" – Andrew Carnes, Aunt Eller, Curly, Gertie Cummings, Will, Ado Annie, Laurey, Ike Skidmore, Cord Elam "All Er Nuthin'" – Will and Ado Annie "People Will Say We're in Love" (Reprise) – Curly and Laurey "Oklahoma" – Company

What awards has Oklahoma! won?

Like the original Oklahoma! production and subsequent revivals, this revival took away some of the highest theatre awards. Oklahoma! was nominated in seven categories and won two Tonys. Check out all the Oklahoma! Tony Awards below, with winning categories in bold.

Tony Awards

Best Revival of a Musical Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical - Damon Daunno Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical - Ali Stroker Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical - Mary Testa Best Direction of a Musical - Daniel Fish Best Scenic Design in a Musical - Laura Jellinek Best Sound Design of a Musical - Drew Levy Best Orchestrations - Daniel Kluger

Major productions of Oklahoma!

Although Oklahoma! Premiered on Broadway in 1943, this production of Oklahoma! revitalises and reenergises the 20th century musical into a thrilling modern hit. The current West End production of Oklahoma! began shortly before the pandemic, but has emerged as a must-see musical.

2015 : The first Oklahoma! workshops take place at Bard College, New York. In a review for the New York Times , their critic said: this “Oklahoma!” revels in the exhilaration of pioneers forging their identities in wide-open spaces.”

2018 : Oklahoma! hads to New York City with performances at St. Ann’s Warehouse from 27 September to 11 Nov. 2018.

2019 : The 75th anniversary staging of Oklahoma! transfers to the Circle in the Square Theatre and wins two Tony Awards. Performances ran from 19 Mar. 2019 to 19 Jan. 2020.

2021 : Oklahoma! begins a United States national tour with performances from 6 Nov. 2021 to 23 Oct. 2022.

2022 : Daniel Fish's Oklahoma! premieres in Europe, with performances at the Young Vic in London from 26 Apr. 2022 to 25 Jun. 2022.

2023 : Oklahoma! opens in the West End, with performances at the Wyndham’s Theatre from 16 Feb. 2023 to 2. Sept. 2023.

How to get Oklahoma! tickets

Oklahoma! was a sell-out sensation at the Young Vic, and it’s set to continue that trend at the Wyndham’s Theatre. You’ll want to see Oklahoma! in the West End in 2023 and understand why people call it “sexy Oklahoma.”

Oklahoma! tickets are available now. Book tickets to Oklahoma! on London Theatre today.

Photo credit: Oklahoma! at the Young Vic (Photos courtesy of production)

Originally published on Sep 28, 2022 13:31

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Oklahoma! Broadway Reviews

Rodgers & Hammerstein's  Oklahoma!  has officiallyopened at Broadway's Circle in the Square Theatre. It will play a limited engagement through Sunday, September 1, 2019.

The cast stars  Will Brill  as Ali Hakim, Anthony Cason as Cord Elam,  Damon Daunno  as Curly McLain,  James Davis as Will Parker ,  Gabrielle Hamilton  as Lead Dancer,  Rebecca Naomi Jones  as Laurey Williams,  Will Mann  as Mike,  Mallory Portnoy  as Gertie Cummings, Ali Stroker  as Ado Annie,  Mitch Tebo  as Andrew Carnes, two-time Tony Award-nominee  Mary Testa  as Aunt Eller and  Patrick Vaill  as Jud Fry. The cast also includes:  Chris Bannow ,  Demetia Hopkins-Greene ,  Sasha Hutchings ,  Denver Milord ,  Kristie Dale Sanders ,  Chelsea Lee Williams .

Let's see what the critics are saying...

Critics' Reviews

Broadway's new Oklahoma! is gonna treat you great — once you get used to it: EW review

This radical new production, which had a short, sold-out run in Brooklyn last fall, probably won't please anyone who wants to savor the pure honey of that great Rodgers and Hammerstein score, first heard in 1943. For that matter, anyone who just wants to sit back and enjoy a production that pops every kernel of Oklahoma!'s Americana corn may feel as if he or she just swallowed a horsefly.

This ‘Oklahoma!’ on Broadway Is Dark and Different—Brilliantly So

You won't leave feeling miserable, but neither will you be slapping your knees. But this production of Oklahoma! feels less 'dark' than sensibly and successfully inquisitive. Fish and his cast ask reasoned questions of a musical that has contained all these questions in plain sight for many years-and in this Oklahoma! those questions are answered with vivid, pugnacious confidence.

Finding the Brightness (and Badonkadonk) Amid the Menace: Re-Reviewing the Dark New Oklahoma!

The production has gotten fuller, freer, and funnier in its Broadway transfer. Its remarkable actors - especially Damon Daunno's cocky, come-hither Curly McClain and James Davis's ebullient, a-couple-knots-short-of-a-lasso Will Parker - feel loose, confidant, and playful, as if they're all taking deeper breaths and, consequently, greater risks. At St. Ann's Warehouse, the performances had a veneer of experimental coolness, a dry, distanced note in the delivery, as if the actors were standing a little apart from their characters and, along with the audience, observing these familiar figures they'd been given to play. Though that sense of comment remains - and Mary Testa and Rebecca Naomi Jones continue to make the most of it as a wry, ruthless Aunt Eller and a Laurey flush with intense, reserved desire - the characters' humanity now feels as present and comprehensive as the director's style.

REVIEW: Broadway revival of ‘Oklahoma!' stands as brilliant metaphor for our current condition as a nation divided

Many of the vocals avoid the bravura in favor of the isolated choke. Most of the dance has been cut; what survives is largely an expression of individual feeling, as when Gabrielle Hamilton dances a solo dream ballet, clad in an ironic 'Dream, Baby, Dream' shirt, wherein it seems America might crush Laurey under its oppressive weight. No wonder Rebecca Naomi Jones plays the putative romantic heroine as unhappy throughout, removed from her world, aware of her own metaphors, interested in a furtive fumble with Jud Fry (the excellent Patrick Vail, who avoids all the usual tropes) but clearly far smarter than her daffy Curly (Damon Daunno).

Review: A Smashing ‘Oklahoma!’ Is Reborn in the Land of Id

What she does is a far cry from the same sequence as immortalized by Agnes de Mille, the show's legendary original choreographer. But on its own, radically reconceptualized terms, it achieves the same effect. As she gallops, slithers and crawls the length of the stage, casting wondering and seductive glances at the front row, Ms. Hamilton comes to seem like undiluted id incarnate, a force that has always been rippling beneath the surface here. She's as stimulating and frightening - and as fresh - as last night's fever dream. So is this astonishing show.

‘Oklahoma!’ Broadway Review: A Joltingly Dark Revival of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Sunny Classic

As with many a reimagining of a classic, not all of Fish's gambits entirely work. That Act 2 dream ballet, reworked since the show's run last fall at Brooklyn's St. Ann's Warehouse, is overlong and dramatically muddy. And his most radical departure from Oscar Hammerstein's script comes in the finale with the decidedly understated return of Jud at the wedding of Curly and Laurey.

BWW Review: Director Daniel Fish Makes Sensational Broadway Debut Illuminating Contemporary Issues in Rodgers and Hammerstein's OKLAHOMA!

Some of the finest Broadway musical revivals of this young century have been directed by Bartlett Sher, who has staged handsome, traditional-looking productions of SOUTH PACIFIC, THE KING AND I, FIDDLER ON THE ROOF and MY FAIR LADY that, with minimal revisions, interpret the material with a modern eye. While Daniel Fish's mounting of Oklahoma!, may seem like an extreme departure on the surface, it displays the same respect for the authors' work while drawing out what will connect with modern audiences. This is a sensational Broadway debut for an artist we'll hopefully be seeing more from in years to come.

'Oklahoma!' review: Superb cast boosts re-imagined Rodgers and Hammerstein classic

But for the most part, this production succeeds thanks to revealing and vulnerable performances all around, immersive intimacy (with the theater made to feel like a wooden communal hall), cute touches (including offering free chili and cornbread at intermission), a streamlined flow and new bluegrass-style orchestrations that work surprisingly well.

BUSINESSDeadline’s Getting A Face-Lift With Redesign On Wednesday ‘Oklahoma!’ Review: Daniel Fish’s Brash New Dive Into Old Territory

With the score making an abrupt shift in style to something like the electric squall of Jimi Hendrix's 'Star Spangled Banner,' Oklahoma! rings out with a nod to the sublime, violent beauty Hendrix found in our national anthem. Is it so surprising Fish finds it on the plains?

'Oklahoma!': Theater Review

There's no denying the abundant pleasures to be had from a sumptuous large-scale revival of a classic American musical with a top-flight cast. But a bold reimagining of a familiar work from the canon can deliver an altogether different and far more startling thrill, bringing out unexpected textures and exposing previously subterranean thematic seams. The virtues of a revisionist production don't negate those of the traditional presentation, or vice versa. As the song says, 'the farmer and the cowman should be friends.' Purists will sniff anyway, but for audiences open to experiencing Rodgers & Hammerstein's Oklahoma! from a fresh perspective, director Daniel Fish's probing revamp will be a revelation.

Broadway Review: ‘Oklahoma!’

This isn't a case of redefining a character but of acknowledging a character's secret self. It's no gimmick, then, but a stroke of directorial invention to play some scenes in complete darkness - the better to allow that private self to step out from the shadows and declare itself. In that spirit, Fish exposes those sexual passions that are kept firmly repressed in traditional productions. (In this version, Curly and Laurey are free to enjoy some candid make-out sessions.) The only failure with this let-it-all-hang-out directorial style is the Dream Ballet, which is supposed to hint delicately of the lovers' yearnings but is here allowed to go on ad nauseam.

Director Daniel Fish's bold, spare revival of Oklahoma! gives us the ranch but not the dressing. The musical's cast of 12 performs in modern clothing, mostly without microphones, with the audience seated on either side of the minimal stage. The house lights are often left up, letting us take in the homespun Western feel of Laura Jellinek's set: wooden risers, colorful banners, racks of guns on one wall. But sometimes the room goes pitch-black, as when Laurie (a wary, ungirlish Rebecca Naomi Jones) is alone with her would-be suitor, Jud (the lanky Patrick Vaill, tense with incel self-pity), or when Jud's rival, Curly (Damon Daunno), visits him in his creepy smokehouse. There are pockets of dark menace in the show's wide-open spaces.

'Oklahoma!' review: Entering a darker, deeper state

This is not a piece of theater that allows you to sit back and be entertained. Fish demands almost as much from the people in the audience as he does from his cast, forcing them to really listen for lines delivered in near whispers, or reorient when the show is plunged into total blackness. Always a threat of violence lurks. 'Country is changing, got to change with it,' Curly says, not long before the rousing title song ends the show. But from the driven, verging on angry way it's sung, the message is clear. That change will come at a price.

OKLAHOMA!: BACK ON THE FARM, BUT WITHOUT THE BRIGHT GOLDEN HAZE

But in striving for realness, Fish can actually reduce the level of their appeal, or the degree to which they earn our empathy. The latter is especially true for the show's darkest figure, the farmhand Jud, a troubled loner obsessed with Curly's love interest, Laurey. Though Jud is sometimes played merely as a heavy, better productions have conveyed his own psychological suffering; here, in Patrick Vaill's sulking, seething portrayal, he's a walking mug shot, lifted straight from a news report of the latest shooting spree. (In one scene, projection designer Joshua Thorson casts Vaill's twitching face larger than life on a screen looming at the back of the set.)

OKLAHOMA!: IT MAY NOT BE NECESSARY TO 21ST-CENTURY-UPDATE A CLASSIC

Daunno, who plays his guitar a good bit, and Jones sing out with gusto and swap insults not far from the level of Benedick and Beatrice in William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. Testa has fun with Aunt Eller's orneriness and adds to the evening's singing (in a traditionally non-singing role). Special praise has to be aimed the way of Ali Stroker, who's taken on the prairie-promiscuous Ado Annie. She bounds about with fervor in a wheel chair. It may be that her countrified version of 'I Cain't Say No' is the highest of the highlights on display. James Davis comes purty close with his sung and danced 'Everything's Up to Date in Kansas City.' Will Brill doesn't lift his voice in song much, but he nails down the meddling peddler well enough, particularly on his 'mind your own business' line.

Still, this Oklahoma! deserves credit for out-of-the-box thinking and casting. It earns its exclamation point, and it knows it. That emphatic punctuation mark is the biggest thing on the Playbill. All things considered, there should also be a giant question mark.

Review: A distracted ‘Oklahoma!’ skims the emotional surface

The most welcome, and most stimulating, innovation is the fresh orchestrations, by Daniel Kluger, for a small band seated in a pit onstage. The instrumentation favors guitars, banjo and accordion, and while Broadway musicals usually feature more robust and varied orchestrations, Kluger's arrangements, and the terrific music-making, gives the show an authentic-feeling countrified flavor that makes the classic songs soar and leap with a new, spirited sound.

‘Oklahoma!’ review: Anti-gun revival of classic shot to hell

Some of Fish's ideas are fun. The chili and cornbread doled out to the audience at intermission is tasty, and the women snapping ears of corn during 'Many A New Day' gives the scene rebellious energy. But in putting his actors in modern dress, making guns his wallpaper and forcing every moment that a gun is brandished or even mentioned to have bombastic significance, Fish clearly is saying he's not a great fan of the culture of the Great Plains - of yesteryear or yesterday. In a preposterously heavy-handed sequence, he even has Jud present Curly with a pistol, rather than the usual knife, which leads to a shocking but inane conclusion. All this, in a hokey old show that includes the lyric, 'Gonna give ya barley, carrots and potaters.' Listening to the New York audience applauding their own virtuosity makes a guy want to put this 'Oklahoma!' out to pasture.

Broadway’s Latest ‘Oklahoma!’ Revival Is a Gimmicky Travesty with Corn Bread

For reasons that make no sense whatsoever, the landmark 1943 Rodgers and Hammerstein production that marked the beginning of a new era in American musicals has now been cheapened and vulgarized at New York's Circle in the Square Theatre in a 'modernized' version designed to appeal to kids who have never heard of Oklahoma! and ignorant ticket buyers who hate musicals in general and avoid anything categorized as 'old-fashioned' in particular.

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