OKLAHOMA ** out of ****
ST. ANN'S WAREHOUSE
At the end of this particular Oklahoma, our hero and heroine are spattered in blood, the cast is spitting out the lyrics of the title song and it climaxes with their faces contorted in rage, anger and despair as they growl a defiant "Haaa!!" and we are plunged into darkness. Clearly, director Daniel Fish wants to expose the violent underbelly of our nation's history. But the final scenes of this classic musical are so muddled -- and so little of what comes before leads logically to this ending -- that we're left exhausted and annoyed.
It begins nicely. As the cowboy Curly, Damon Daunno wanders onstage and turns "Oh What A Beautiful Morning" from an ode to wide open spaces into a flirtatious charmer. A bluegrass band at one end of the wide open rectangular stage provides down home accompaniment, chili is cooking in crockpots on tables that stretch from one end to the other and Aunt Eller starts whipping up some cornbread (she's played with wit and vinegar by the marvelous Mary Testa). Laurey (Rebecca Naomi Jones) does her best to resist Curly's appeal and take him down a notch, something his amiable ego can easily handle and probably needs.
Right away, director Daniel Fish sets an appealing, intimate tone. No full orchestra to overwhelm the simple story, the audience as family sharing a meal and dialogue that weaves in and out of song (just as in the original production). Fish also plays with microphones, allowing characters who want to shout out their sentiments to grab a mike and hear their voices amplified. It works a treat. The show can breathe, the marvelous songs sound fresh and natural and the story simply unfolds. No meta conceit needed here -- it's just holding a classic up to the light.
Curly and Laurey are clearly meant for each other, but she's not going to make it that easy for him. Fair enough but she goes a little too far by accepting a ride to the dance that Saturday from her hired hand Jud Fry (Patrick Vaill, dressed like a Seattle grunge musician). Jud may be the best hand Aunt Ella ever had, but he's also creepy. Laurey is so scared of him she takes care never to be alone with him, if possible. Jud keeps to himself, puts nudies up in his room out back and is in general a malignant presence, more disturbed than disdainful.
Laurey goes too far but Ado Annie can't go far enough. Played with charm by Ali Stroker of the DeafWest revival of Spring Awakening, Ado loves whichever man is in front of her, whether it's the dimwitted but lovable cowboy Will Parker (a winning James Davis) or the traveling peddler Ali Hakim (Mallory Portnoy, demolishing the stereotypical take on the role and making this part his own). Unlike the main romance, this is pure fun and the three actors make the most of it from start to finish. Davis avoids making Parker too dumb -- he's just determined to get the girl he loves and maybe not so good at math. The peddler can sometimes be done too broadly as a con artist; Portnoy makes Ali so specific and fun (he just loves a good time) that a problematic part becomes a showstopper. Stroker is an actress with a disability and spends most of the show in a wheelchair. It's notable how easily that is incorporated into the movement and song and dance, helped immeasurably by Stroker's yodeling vocals and the witty dip in her wheelchair she's given when kissed by Hakim towards the end.
Despite the refreshing presentation, this really is your mother's Oklahoma: the subplot is silly hijinks and the main story is a little serious. As in most productions I've seen, Jud isn't a loner or outcast, he's a genuine threat to this civilizing territory soon to become a state. It's not that he doesn't fit in. Someone as psychopathic as Jud doesn't really belong anywhere. That's driven home by the scene where Curly visits Jud in his lodgings and gives this snake of a man a good rattle. Fish pulls out all the stops here: the theater is plunged into darkness and a camera swoops in to deliver a close-up of Jud's face which we see displayed on a back wall. Curly paints a picture of Jud dying and the whole town coming out to mourn him, suddenly realizing what a swell guy Jud really was. Like some sour Tom Sawyer, Jud eats up this idea for a while until he turns on Curly and the rest of them, vowing to have his revenge once and for all. For all the flashy staging (movie cameras! total darkness!), nothing in this scene changes our understanding of Jud (or Curly) so it's hard to see the point.
All bets are off in the beginning of Act Two. After some chili and cornbread doled out to the audience (thanks Mary Testa!), we're given a whole new slant on the show. While the cast is hardly costumed in period clothing, the suggestion of prairies and country folk and the heartland has been strong (except for Jud's annoyingly anachronistic clothes and facial hair worthy of Kurt Cobain). But following on the high-tech flash of those movie cameras in act one, we get fog rolling on stage and then dancer Gabrielle Hamilton in a dream ballet choreographed by John Heginbotham.
You can hardly pretend they're not making a statement when the five foot nothing and bald-headed woman of color Hamilton comes striding out of the fog. She's wearing an exceptionally ugly top emblazoned with the slogan "DREAM BABY DREAM" and disco shorts, both glossy and modern and looking more appropriate for the Donna Summer musical than Oklahoma. It's a statement writ large, but a rather juvenile one.
Hamilton's diminutive height and strong stage presence creates an interesting dynamic when she stares down multiple cast members, somehow looking down on them even as she looks up. Yet other than some modern technology, nothing in the first act has brought a modern sensibility or meta commentary on Oklahoma, so the clothing and the slogan and the vibe of it just feels like a desperate attempt to carry some import and get in our face. Whereas the color and disability blind casting for the rest of the show is natural and unforced, here it feels the show is hoping Hamilton can symbolize something they haven't given her the context to deliver. She dances with poise and determination, but to what effect? The sudden appearance of a dozen of so more dancers (all wearing the same garish costume) for a very brief flourish feels similarly wasteful and pointless. I look forward to seeing Hamilton in something worthier of her talent.
It gets worse. Laurey's scene alone with Jud is done in total darkness, just like Curly's scene with him. But since his actions can be portrayed as anything from awkward to assault, having it take place in the dark is unhelpful dramatically. We're left a little in the dark too, even though before this Laurey has been wise to keep him far, far away from her. She angrily fires Jud as he buckles up his pants and vows revenge yet again.
Of course, Laurey and Curly get married but, after weeks away, Jud returns to spoil the moment. But now he's modest and shy and nicely dressed? He asks to kiss the bride, yet it's no peck on the cheek. To add to our confusion, Laurey seems to respond positively to his kisses, looking at him wonderingly or with confusion when they're done, rather than the fear or disgust one might expect. In the final absurdity, Jud's death is staged as essentially suicide by Curly, with Jud handing him a pistol, cocking it and then waiting politely to be shot down. Laurey and Curly are splattered with blood and what in God's name any of this could mean escapes me. That leads right into the would-be blistering reprise of the title song.
What began as a rare chance to see talented pros tackle this work in an intimate setting turns into a frustrating shambles by the end. I found Jones rather stiff in her dialogue scenes. Vaill has the unenviable task of tackling Jud in a show that has no clue what to do with him, but Vaill certainly doesn't help matters. My guest preferred Daunno in the musical Hadestown while I liked him more here. But there's no doubt he has a charm and presence. Most everyone else is delightful whenever this production gets out of the way and let's them deliver those songs. But that gets rarer and rarer as the show goes on.
I would hardly say Oklahoma is a problem musical, but I've never seen a production that makes sense of Jud, not even the brilliant 1998 revival in London that made Hugh Jackman a star and featured Shuler Hensley as Jud. Why is Curly so hostile to Jud? Any fool would realize Jud is hardly a threat to woo away Laurey. If Jud is genuinely dangerous then Curly is unnecessarily antagonizing him. If Jud is just a confused, inept loner with poor social skills, then the handsome and winning Curly is just being cruel.
Jud makes me think of the John Wayne character in John Ford's classic The Searchers. Wayne's violent, racist Ethan Edwards is a relic of the past, the murderous sort needed to clear the land of "hostiles" (that is, the Native Americans who lived there first). Now that pioneers are settling down in West Texas, Ethan is an unwelcome reminder of how that land was made available in the first place. He was a necessary evil but he's not necessary any more. At the end of that film, the door is firmly shut on Ethan, leaving him on the outside of hearth and home.
Jud on the other hand is hardly necessary. Laurey says she is scared of him and in the original production, Jud spoils the wedding, harasses her and tries to kill Curly a second time, dying by stumbling his own knife. Jud is his own worst enemy. Making him both hateful, frightening and a sacrificial lamb as in this production simply makes no sense.
But what if Jud were black (and Laurey white)? Presumably this has been done somewhere before. Fish's desire to cast a new light on this story might have paid dividends with some color specific casting. (Indeed, it crossed my mind at the beginning of the show that actor Will Mann might be playing Jud; more's the pity he wasn't.) With that change, many of the questions are answered and many possibilities open up.
Aunt Eller insists Jud is the best hired hand she ever had and yet he's given poor lodgings and clearly isolated from the rest of the townfolk. Laurey insists she is scared of him and refuses to be alone with the man. Take your pick: that could be played as simple prejudice or a case of her protesting too much, with Laurey loudly proclaiming one attitude but her genuine desire being quite another.
Curly's immediate antagonism -- especially if he suspects Laurey might actually fancy Jud -- makes more sense here too. Then Curly's suggestion Jud simply hang himself takes on an even uglier tone. Some dialogue and action would be better if cut (like Jud's lame attempt to kill Curly with a novelty toy that's booby trapped), but much more would take on new resonance.
When Laurey and Judd are alone, it might be her initiating romance only to have them be discovered. At that point she could angrily accuse him of "rape;" unfairly firing the man because they're seen by others would be the least of it. His brutal murder and the joke of a trial at the end would be far more potent too. If a production wanted to underline the violence and darkness in American history, a casting change like this would be consistent with that goal, letting scene after scene build to a shattering conclusion, rather than simply having it come out of nowhere. Certainly it would be in keeping with the bold and provocative work Rodgers and Hammerstein delivered throughout their partnership.
It would certainly be in keeping with the history of Oklahoma. That territory once featured such a vibrant and successful free black population that President Teddy Roosevelt toyed with the idea of turning the area into a black-majority state. Needless to say, such liberty wasn't allowed to last. The prosperous black people of Tulsa were targeted by the Ku Klux Klan, the city government, the police and the white community. Their campaign of intimidation climaxed with the shameful 1921 Tulsa Race Riot in which black-owned businesses were decimated and an untold number of black people numbering in the thousands were beaten, hospitalized or killed.
Heck, Jud could be a Native American. The Oklahoma Territory was the location where countless indigenous Americans were forced to relocate by the US government. Eventually, dozens of tribes were displaced to the area and -- again -- just as government officials considered creating a black-majority state, an all-Indian state was almost formed as well.
No such luck, but some remnants of their presence remain. The name Oklahoma itself is a combination of two words in the Choctaw language, literally meaning "red people" or more colloquially "Native Americans." So the title song in this all-American musical, the one almost anyone can sing a snatch of (or at least spell), the state name they proclaim as "OK!" with exuberance and joy? That's a Choctaw word. They're loudly and proudly (and cluelessly) reminding us of the people that were here first and then brutally removed. If you want to rethink the musical Oklahoma, you could start right there.
THEATER OF 2018
Homelife/The Zoo Story (at Signature) *** out of ****
Escape To Margaritaville **
Broadway By The Year: 1947 and 1966 ***
Lobby Hero ***
Frozen **
Rocktopia *
Angels in America ** 1/2
Mean Girls ** 1/2
The Sting **
Mlima's Tale ** 1/2
Children Of A Lesser God ** 1/2
Sancho: An Act Of Remembrance ** 1/2
The Metromaniacs ***
Summer: The Donna Summer Musical *
The Seafarer **
Henry V (Public Mobile Unit w Zenzi Williams) * 1/2
Saint Joan **
Travesties *** 1/2
Summer and Smoke ** 1/2
My Fair Lady ** 1/2
Broadway By The Year: 1956 and 1975 ** 1/2
Bernhard/Hamlet * 1/2
On Beckett ***
What The Constitution Means To Me **
The Winning Side *
Oklahoma **
ST. ANN'S WAREHOUSE
At the end of this particular Oklahoma, our hero and heroine are spattered in blood, the cast is spitting out the lyrics of the title song and it climaxes with their faces contorted in rage, anger and despair as they growl a defiant "Haaa!!" and we are plunged into darkness. Clearly, director Daniel Fish wants to expose the violent underbelly of our nation's history. But the final scenes of this classic musical are so muddled -- and so little of what comes before leads logically to this ending -- that we're left exhausted and annoyed.
It begins nicely. As the cowboy Curly, Damon Daunno wanders onstage and turns "Oh What A Beautiful Morning" from an ode to wide open spaces into a flirtatious charmer. A bluegrass band at one end of the wide open rectangular stage provides down home accompaniment, chili is cooking in crockpots on tables that stretch from one end to the other and Aunt Eller starts whipping up some cornbread (she's played with wit and vinegar by the marvelous Mary Testa). Laurey (Rebecca Naomi Jones) does her best to resist Curly's appeal and take him down a notch, something his amiable ego can easily handle and probably needs.
Right away, director Daniel Fish sets an appealing, intimate tone. No full orchestra to overwhelm the simple story, the audience as family sharing a meal and dialogue that weaves in and out of song (just as in the original production). Fish also plays with microphones, allowing characters who want to shout out their sentiments to grab a mike and hear their voices amplified. It works a treat. The show can breathe, the marvelous songs sound fresh and natural and the story simply unfolds. No meta conceit needed here -- it's just holding a classic up to the light.
Curly and Laurey are clearly meant for each other, but she's not going to make it that easy for him. Fair enough but she goes a little too far by accepting a ride to the dance that Saturday from her hired hand Jud Fry (Patrick Vaill, dressed like a Seattle grunge musician). Jud may be the best hand Aunt Ella ever had, but he's also creepy. Laurey is so scared of him she takes care never to be alone with him, if possible. Jud keeps to himself, puts nudies up in his room out back and is in general a malignant presence, more disturbed than disdainful.
Laurey goes too far but Ado Annie can't go far enough. Played with charm by Ali Stroker of the DeafWest revival of Spring Awakening, Ado loves whichever man is in front of her, whether it's the dimwitted but lovable cowboy Will Parker (a winning James Davis) or the traveling peddler Ali Hakim (Mallory Portnoy, demolishing the stereotypical take on the role and making this part his own). Unlike the main romance, this is pure fun and the three actors make the most of it from start to finish. Davis avoids making Parker too dumb -- he's just determined to get the girl he loves and maybe not so good at math. The peddler can sometimes be done too broadly as a con artist; Portnoy makes Ali so specific and fun (he just loves a good time) that a problematic part becomes a showstopper. Stroker is an actress with a disability and spends most of the show in a wheelchair. It's notable how easily that is incorporated into the movement and song and dance, helped immeasurably by Stroker's yodeling vocals and the witty dip in her wheelchair she's given when kissed by Hakim towards the end.
Despite the refreshing presentation, this really is your mother's Oklahoma: the subplot is silly hijinks and the main story is a little serious. As in most productions I've seen, Jud isn't a loner or outcast, he's a genuine threat to this civilizing territory soon to become a state. It's not that he doesn't fit in. Someone as psychopathic as Jud doesn't really belong anywhere. That's driven home by the scene where Curly visits Jud in his lodgings and gives this snake of a man a good rattle. Fish pulls out all the stops here: the theater is plunged into darkness and a camera swoops in to deliver a close-up of Jud's face which we see displayed on a back wall. Curly paints a picture of Jud dying and the whole town coming out to mourn him, suddenly realizing what a swell guy Jud really was. Like some sour Tom Sawyer, Jud eats up this idea for a while until he turns on Curly and the rest of them, vowing to have his revenge once and for all. For all the flashy staging (movie cameras! total darkness!), nothing in this scene changes our understanding of Jud (or Curly) so it's hard to see the point.
All bets are off in the beginning of Act Two. After some chili and cornbread doled out to the audience (thanks Mary Testa!), we're given a whole new slant on the show. While the cast is hardly costumed in period clothing, the suggestion of prairies and country folk and the heartland has been strong (except for Jud's annoyingly anachronistic clothes and facial hair worthy of Kurt Cobain). But following on the high-tech flash of those movie cameras in act one, we get fog rolling on stage and then dancer Gabrielle Hamilton in a dream ballet choreographed by John Heginbotham.
You can hardly pretend they're not making a statement when the five foot nothing and bald-headed woman of color Hamilton comes striding out of the fog. She's wearing an exceptionally ugly top emblazoned with the slogan "DREAM BABY DREAM" and disco shorts, both glossy and modern and looking more appropriate for the Donna Summer musical than Oklahoma. It's a statement writ large, but a rather juvenile one.
Hamilton's diminutive height and strong stage presence creates an interesting dynamic when she stares down multiple cast members, somehow looking down on them even as she looks up. Yet other than some modern technology, nothing in the first act has brought a modern sensibility or meta commentary on Oklahoma, so the clothing and the slogan and the vibe of it just feels like a desperate attempt to carry some import and get in our face. Whereas the color and disability blind casting for the rest of the show is natural and unforced, here it feels the show is hoping Hamilton can symbolize something they haven't given her the context to deliver. She dances with poise and determination, but to what effect? The sudden appearance of a dozen of so more dancers (all wearing the same garish costume) for a very brief flourish feels similarly wasteful and pointless. I look forward to seeing Hamilton in something worthier of her talent.
It gets worse. Laurey's scene alone with Jud is done in total darkness, just like Curly's scene with him. But since his actions can be portrayed as anything from awkward to assault, having it take place in the dark is unhelpful dramatically. We're left a little in the dark too, even though before this Laurey has been wise to keep him far, far away from her. She angrily fires Jud as he buckles up his pants and vows revenge yet again.
Of course, Laurey and Curly get married but, after weeks away, Jud returns to spoil the moment. But now he's modest and shy and nicely dressed? He asks to kiss the bride, yet it's no peck on the cheek. To add to our confusion, Laurey seems to respond positively to his kisses, looking at him wonderingly or with confusion when they're done, rather than the fear or disgust one might expect. In the final absurdity, Jud's death is staged as essentially suicide by Curly, with Jud handing him a pistol, cocking it and then waiting politely to be shot down. Laurey and Curly are splattered with blood and what in God's name any of this could mean escapes me. That leads right into the would-be blistering reprise of the title song.
What began as a rare chance to see talented pros tackle this work in an intimate setting turns into a frustrating shambles by the end. I found Jones rather stiff in her dialogue scenes. Vaill has the unenviable task of tackling Jud in a show that has no clue what to do with him, but Vaill certainly doesn't help matters. My guest preferred Daunno in the musical Hadestown while I liked him more here. But there's no doubt he has a charm and presence. Most everyone else is delightful whenever this production gets out of the way and let's them deliver those songs. But that gets rarer and rarer as the show goes on.
I would hardly say Oklahoma is a problem musical, but I've never seen a production that makes sense of Jud, not even the brilliant 1998 revival in London that made Hugh Jackman a star and featured Shuler Hensley as Jud. Why is Curly so hostile to Jud? Any fool would realize Jud is hardly a threat to woo away Laurey. If Jud is genuinely dangerous then Curly is unnecessarily antagonizing him. If Jud is just a confused, inept loner with poor social skills, then the handsome and winning Curly is just being cruel.
Jud makes me think of the John Wayne character in John Ford's classic The Searchers. Wayne's violent, racist Ethan Edwards is a relic of the past, the murderous sort needed to clear the land of "hostiles" (that is, the Native Americans who lived there first). Now that pioneers are settling down in West Texas, Ethan is an unwelcome reminder of how that land was made available in the first place. He was a necessary evil but he's not necessary any more. At the end of that film, the door is firmly shut on Ethan, leaving him on the outside of hearth and home.
Jud on the other hand is hardly necessary. Laurey says she is scared of him and in the original production, Jud spoils the wedding, harasses her and tries to kill Curly a second time, dying by stumbling his own knife. Jud is his own worst enemy. Making him both hateful, frightening and a sacrificial lamb as in this production simply makes no sense.
But what if Jud were black (and Laurey white)? Presumably this has been done somewhere before. Fish's desire to cast a new light on this story might have paid dividends with some color specific casting. (Indeed, it crossed my mind at the beginning of the show that actor Will Mann might be playing Jud; more's the pity he wasn't.) With that change, many of the questions are answered and many possibilities open up.
Aunt Eller insists Jud is the best hired hand she ever had and yet he's given poor lodgings and clearly isolated from the rest of the townfolk. Laurey insists she is scared of him and refuses to be alone with the man. Take your pick: that could be played as simple prejudice or a case of her protesting too much, with Laurey loudly proclaiming one attitude but her genuine desire being quite another.
Curly's immediate antagonism -- especially if he suspects Laurey might actually fancy Jud -- makes more sense here too. Then Curly's suggestion Jud simply hang himself takes on an even uglier tone. Some dialogue and action would be better if cut (like Jud's lame attempt to kill Curly with a novelty toy that's booby trapped), but much more would take on new resonance.
When Laurey and Judd are alone, it might be her initiating romance only to have them be discovered. At that point she could angrily accuse him of "rape;" unfairly firing the man because they're seen by others would be the least of it. His brutal murder and the joke of a trial at the end would be far more potent too. If a production wanted to underline the violence and darkness in American history, a casting change like this would be consistent with that goal, letting scene after scene build to a shattering conclusion, rather than simply having it come out of nowhere. Certainly it would be in keeping with the bold and provocative work Rodgers and Hammerstein delivered throughout their partnership.
It would certainly be in keeping with the history of Oklahoma. That territory once featured such a vibrant and successful free black population that President Teddy Roosevelt toyed with the idea of turning the area into a black-majority state. Needless to say, such liberty wasn't allowed to last. The prosperous black people of Tulsa were targeted by the Ku Klux Klan, the city government, the police and the white community. Their campaign of intimidation climaxed with the shameful 1921 Tulsa Race Riot in which black-owned businesses were decimated and an untold number of black people numbering in the thousands were beaten, hospitalized or killed.
Heck, Jud could be a Native American. The Oklahoma Territory was the location where countless indigenous Americans were forced to relocate by the US government. Eventually, dozens of tribes were displaced to the area and -- again -- just as government officials considered creating a black-majority state, an all-Indian state was almost formed as well.
No such luck, but some remnants of their presence remain. The name Oklahoma itself is a combination of two words in the Choctaw language, literally meaning "red people" or more colloquially "Native Americans." So the title song in this all-American musical, the one almost anyone can sing a snatch of (or at least spell), the state name they proclaim as "OK!" with exuberance and joy? That's a Choctaw word. They're loudly and proudly (and cluelessly) reminding us of the people that were here first and then brutally removed. If you want to rethink the musical Oklahoma, you could start right there.
THEATER OF 2018
Homelife/The Zoo Story (at Signature) *** out of ****
Escape To Margaritaville **
Broadway By The Year: 1947 and 1966 ***
Lobby Hero ***
Frozen **
Rocktopia *
Angels in America ** 1/2
Mean Girls ** 1/2
The Sting **
Mlima's Tale ** 1/2
Children Of A Lesser God ** 1/2
Sancho: An Act Of Remembrance ** 1/2
The Metromaniacs ***
Summer: The Donna Summer Musical *
The Seafarer **
Henry V (Public Mobile Unit w Zenzi Williams) * 1/2
Saint Joan **
Travesties *** 1/2
Summer and Smoke ** 1/2
My Fair Lady ** 1/2
Broadway By The Year: 1956 and 1975 ** 1/2
Bernhard/Hamlet * 1/2
On Beckett ***
What The Constitution Means To Me **
The Winning Side *
Oklahoma **
Thanks for reading. Michael Giltz is the creator of BookFilter, a book lover’s best friend. Trying to decide what to read next?Head to BookFilter! Need a smart and easy gift? Head to BookFilter! Wondering what new titles came out this week in your favorite categories, like cookbooks and mystery and more? Head to BookFilter! It’s a website that lets you browse for books online the way you do in a physical bookstore, provides comprehensive info on new releases every week in every category and offers passionate personal recommendations every step of the way. It’s like a fall book preview or holiday gift guide — but every week in every category. He’s also the cohost of Showbiz Sandbox, a weekly pop culture podcast that reveals the industry take on entertainment news of the day with top journalists and opinion makers as guests. It’s available for free on iTunes. Visit Michael Giltz at his website. Download his podcast of celebrity interviews and his radio show, also called Popsurfing and also available for free on iTunes.
