Oklahoma! returns to Broadway! Stripped down to reveal the darker psychological truths at its core, Daniel Fish's production tells a story of a community circling its wagons against an outsider, and the violence of the frontier that shaped America.
Over 75 years after Rodgers & Hammerstein reinvented the American musical, this is Oklahoma! as you've never seen or heard it before - reimagined for the 21st century.
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.
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.
Videos