Review: OKLAHOMA! at ASU Gammage

BroadwayWorld/Phoenix is again delighted to welcome David Appleford as a guest contributor to its pages ~ as always, featuring his distinctive, well-balanced, and intelligent perspective on theatre. In this case, he shines the light on the National Tour production of OKLAHOMA!

Here now ~ From the keyboard of David Appleford:

If you're a follower of theatre, but not altogether up with current events and you've heard little regarding the new, nationally touring production of OKLAHOMA! but were thinking of going, there are a few things of which you should be aware.

First, this re-vamped, re-imagined, newly crafted production of the classic musical, currently playing at ASU Gammage, Tempe until Sunday, October 23, is not the Rodgers and Hammerstein of your parents. And while all song lyrics are left intact, here they're re-arranged to sound nothing like that hugely popular, original Broadway cast album your folks might have bought. It was the first show to ever record an original cast album.

Next, compare the marketing phrasing for the original show to the marketing for the new production. Back in the day, the show was promoted as having "Soaring melodies and joyous songs in a loving celebration of the American spirit." That was then. This is now. "Sexy, dark, and jolting, stripped down to reveal the darker psychological truths at its core."

OKLAHOMA! was based on a 1931 play set on farm country in Indian Territory, 1906. Why would that appeal to Rodgers and Hammerstein? If you know any theatre history of R&H, you would know that all of their musicals have a dark, underbelly at their core. That's what gives them their substance. It was to tell stories of the Jewish experience in America and to illustrate the struggle of an old culture trying to integrate and find acceptance in a new world, and the resistance often encountered by those already here. But R&H were only too aware that American audiences at the time would never flock to see stories about Jewish lives and their times. For general, mass appeal, things would have to be disguised.

That's why shows like OKLAHOMA!, Carousel, The King and I, and The Sound of Music, while at their core contain themes of prejudice, injustice, racial tension, unfair work practices foisted on immigrants, and even tales of being hounded out of a country by Nazis, they were all designed and presented to appeal to a very white, American audience who would embrace and become engaged in stories that included recognizable types of their own, along with the addition of memorable soaring melodies and tuneful, sweeping scores.

But that darker element was always there, and you could see it if you knew what to look for. After all, what is OKLAHOMA! really about? On the surface, it's about simple country farmers, the cowboys who share the land, and their families, all living together on undeveloped Indian Territory in 1906 with little else to do all day except flirt, go courting, and chase each other. In reality, these characters should be full of hope for living in an area that may soon become part of the United States, but instead they enact conflicts in fear caused by ignorance that will always occur when groups of different people with different ideals are forced to interact together to make life work.

Director Daniel Fish is a New York-based director with an undeniably impressive resume. What he's done here is re-styled the whole show, slimmed the cast down, removed the orchestra, and replaced it with a finger-pickin', fiddle-playin', banjo rockin', small band permanently on view, while staging the show at a timeless could-be-anywhere picnic ground. Rows of bunting hang above while cans of unopened Bud Light sit on the picnic table tops ready for the cast to crack open a brewski whenever they want.

The cast is colorblind, the costumes appear mostly present-day, and to underline the menace between the hero Curly and the villain Judd, their scene is played in a total blackout - no joke; the house is black throughout their dialog - forcing the audience to concentrate and focus on the ugliness of Curly's taunting. The thing is, in the show's original, traditional presentation, we already understood that Curly was not altogether overly heroic and that Judd was unfairly viewed and ended up acting the way he did because of that ignorance towards those who might be a different. Here, Fish's style feels so heavy-handed and obvious - and ultimately unnecessary, despite the rewards of two Tony's - it's as if his dark, brooding approach succeeded only in sucking the life out of the whole deal. It was like watching a classic musical re-tooled to appeal to those who don't really like musicals.

If you wonder what R&H themselves might have thought of this new version of their classic, consider the following. When the 1955 film was in production, R&H personally insisted on overseeing every creative element of the adaptation to prevent others from making creative changes. They wanted to make sure the film stuck to their original vision. It was how they wanted it to be told. With this in mind, you'd have assumed they wouldn't care for Daniel Fish's new adaptation. And, to tell you the truth, neither did I.

ASU Gammage ~ 1200 S. Forest Avenue, Tempe, AZ ~ 480-965-3434 ~ https://www.asugammage.com/

Poster credit to ASU Gammage

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