Original cast, 1943
Along the Great White Way, where directors love to re-conceive, they are at it again, this time messing around with the 1943 Rodgers & Hammerstein classic, Oklahoma!, which revolutionized musical theatre scripting and scoring.
But whether Dick and Oscar would delight in the extreme PC-driven casting, not just seen in last year’s revival of Oklahoma! at New York‘s Circle in the Square Theatre, but in other productions out there as well, is another matter. To read the dazzling reviews for what transpired at Circle in the Square is to imagine a blockbuster darling charmed by full houses and settled in for a good long run. Alas, the Curly and Laurie trick did not last a year, and apparently limped into closing night. Boffo biz out of the gate gradually slumped into checkered patronage.
In a radical restaging by director Daniel Fish, the musical had been stripped down to the bare “essentials," so noted the experts, shrinking the ballet to a bald dancer skittering like a horse across the stage; toughening down the characters into a darker world of bizarre depth. No chorus, little dancing, and a Jud Fry whose death is not an accident at the hands of of his own knife, but of the gun he gives Curly as a wedding gift – which backfires. All of which culminates in a “quivering, feel-bad ending, and the tears,” in the words of The Atlantic’s reviewer Todd Purdum.
Circle in the Square Theater, production, 2019
This one got the critics in neon, but it did not get the box office in gold for very long. In six months the show was doing only so-so, and would close in January after 9 months on the boards – some thought it should have closed sooner. It lost money and is now headed for the road, where the producers hope to recoup their loses.
In his largely laudatory notice, Purdum nonetheless observed a number of “smiling faces”seen in the seats who were missing after intermission. And yet, more “repelled” attendees walking out during the second half.
There is, to be sure, a small and growing segment of the ticket buying public that hungers for a more timely realism in step with changing sensibilities – a realism that shuns traditional marriage and now even the two genders. They will not be ignored, and at the annual Tony Awards, where TV ratings continue to fall, their voices are echoed by Tony medalists taking time to lecture — or so I’ve heard. Close by in the shadows, awaiting there turn, is the LGBTQ crowd. They fared far better in another more radical staging of Oklahoma!, in 2018, at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, of all placdes. Held in Ashland (how apt a word), in that groveling departure championed by director Bill Rauch, Curly and Laurey were lesbians, Aunt Eller a transsexual; Will Parker and Ado Annie a gay couple, while peddler Ali Hakim filled out the bisexual slot. Anybody out there still not accounted for? Yes, apparently the powers at Happy Talk sanctioned this travesty. Have they no shame?
From the 1955 film: Shirley Jones and Gordon MacRae
The dream ballet.
The dream ballet.
In a scathing review of the Daniel Fish staging, attack dog Rex Reed began, “It had to happen. The miserable fools who are hell bent on changing the theatre world by destroying timeless classics in a misguided effort to make them relevant, trendy, and politically correct (whatever that means) finally got around to screwing up Oklahoma!”
Reed blasted Fish for cheapening and vulgarizing the cowboy classic, none too impressed by such glaring incongruities as “the now handicapped Ado-Annie [who] belts ‘I Can’t Say No’ in a wheelchair as a nod to disabled performers everywhere.” Another Reed rant: “Why is the most dramatic scene, when Curly encounters Jud in the smokehouse, staged in a complete blackout?”
The Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization in recent years has condoned if not encouraged such extreme make-overs — do you smell the sound of money?-- whatever can get the works of Dick and Oscar back on a marquee, whatever it takes to keep their names alive and the royalties rolling in — to the point of ignoble denigration. The ill-fated 2002 revival of Flower Drum Song (with a totally new book by David Henry Hwang pushing an anti-Communist agenda), left the critics hissing, and was history in five withering months. Not so, South Pacific, which, true to the original libretto — how revolutionary! — enjoyed a two year run in revival. I saw it twice and would have gone again had I the chance. Will they ever learn?
Hugh Jackman in the London production, 1998
For my money, a movie of the 1998 London production of Oklahoma! at the Royal National Theatre, staring Hugh Jackman, is by far the best staging I have ever seen of the show. Credit director Trevor Nunn, who dug deeper into the script, but stayed a sane, level course.
On the road, can Fish’s Oklahoma! make up for losses on Broadway? It should do well in blue cities. There are plenty of ticket buyers in the San Francisco Bay Area who might lap up its pandering to their social politics. Our California mayor’s wife is not “the first lady” but the “first partner.” And that special person in your home, once known as wife or husband, soul mate, best friend, or dearly beloved — is now, in the words of Bay Area-based doctor, Jen Gunter, op-editing for The New York Times, “household sex partner.” Batteries included?
In wrapping his review, Purdum asks, “So how is Oklahoma! doing as it embarks on its quarter century as the model American musical?... Just fine.”
Evidently, for Mr. Purdum,”just fine” does not include ticket sales (aka: populist appeal). In order to lure profit-raising mobs to the windows, the producers may need tons more “first partners” and “household sex partners.”
Oh, what a beautiful orgy.
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UPDATE: 5.28.2020: My lending the impression that the 1998 British version by Trevor Nunn of Oklahoma! followed the original script with fidelity was not exactly right. I had based this on the misleading comments of the late Mary Rodgers and the Rodgers and Hammerstein office, offered in the Extras that came with the DVD.
Turns out, according to an in-depth review of the production by John Heilpern in the New York Observer, that director Trevor Nunn "added dialogue" from the original source, Green Grow the Lilacs, upon which Oscar Hammerstein II had adapted his libretto. I had wondered why the film of the show is so long -- a good half hour longer than the 1943 production. So, out of curiosity, I followed the script in book form, of the original 1943 production, as I listened to the movie of the Nunn staging. Virtually impossible at times. There are many revisions (or possibly new lines), some of them giving more attention to the character and menace of Jud Fry. In fact, Curly obsesses over him with Aunt Eller earlier in the Nunn staging, before rather the after the song Kansas City. Lines or sections of dialogue have ether been re-positioned or cut. Someday, somebody might make this a major project.
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