April 19, 2019
A number of people in
online musical theatre enclaves are hard-lining about the new revival of Oklahoma!
(or, as contracts would have it now, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!) and not merely deciding not to
see it, based on descriptions in articles and reviews, but condemning it. And
while I’m not interested in that is
perfectly valid, I think How dare they?
is a privilege reserved for those who show up. (A corollary to the principle
that you’re not entitled to your opinion; you’re entitled to your informed opinion.)
For
indeed, having (neutrally) read some descriptions myself, I was not prepared
for the overall sensibility (I’ll get back to that in a minute). Yes the
houselights are on most of the time (except for specific, stark effects), yes
there’s diversity casting (including an African American Laurey
[Rebecca Naomi Jones] and an Ado
Annie [Ali Stroker]
in a wheelchair), yes the cast size is reduced to its essentials, yes the score
has been highly countrified, both as
sung and as played by the small band (even preserving most of the accompaniment
figures and arrangements, the new orchestrations and instrumentation almost
completely re-characterize it); yes to all kinds of stark alterations to the
norm; stuff that the authors would likely not have approved in their time. But the Rodgers and
Hammerstein Organization (via Ted Chapin) has made part of their mandate
considering the zeitgeist of whatever the current world is, and has approved it; which doesn’t for a
moment mean anybody else has to
approve it, but does mean that
director Daniel Fish’s reimagining
comes by its “sacrilege” honestly and officially. And, reportedly, not entirely
without modification on some interpretive points, in order to earn the
sanction.
As I’ve said
before in these cyber-pages, any revival of a musical that takes a new approach
is a conversation with the original production. A musical is such a
collaborative and specific endeavor that, much more than a straight play, its
debut carries with it a template for the future. (Not for nothing did R&H
themselves film at least one of their productions [the London company of South Pacific] to provide a guideline
for future stagings. Though they provided far more
than that: They provided a pristine preservation of what you can’t replicate anymore, as well, styles
and techniques of musical theatre acting and directing that hadn’t yet begun to
borrow and incorporate aspects of realistic human behavior of the sort that
informed straight play presentation and film.) Therefore, any departure, and in
particular, any pointed departure, is
a conscious reaction, such that even the departure has the original in its DNA.
My surprise was encountering the tone.
I’d read that this Oklahoma! was
environmental and adult, which I took to mean very deeply naturalistic and more overtly sexual, which it is; but
right alongside that, it is very consciously a take on Oklahoma!, a
staging that, directly and indirectly, acknowledges the presence of the
audience; it doesn’t necessarily assume, but seems to hope, that we’re at least conversant enough with the musical, to look at it anew, both inviting and
daring us to be complicit…and in the grand tradition of give-em-an-inch-they-take-a-mile, each step along the road of
complicity is followed by another step even further away from the norm. Until
finally, changing neither a story event nor a word of text, it leaves us with a
different, darker Americana than the show originally celebrated, one perhaps
meant to symbolize certain regions of flyover country today.
As
to the casting choices, they are both random and deliberate. Casting Ms. Jones
as Laurey seems less borne of calculated diversity
than just having found in her the level of feisty resistance and smouldering sexuality that makes her far more independent
than selfish; casting Ms. Stroker as Ado Annie, even
more, just seems like the right woman for the job: Her sexuality is practically an explosion, matched by a vocal
delivery so joyously exuberant and assured that her rightness for the role is
undeniable; that she brings a wheelchair with her is mere happenstance (indeed,
both Ms. Jones and Ms. Stroker share the same two
understudies; both African American, neither confined to a wheelchair).
However, the casting of Curly (Damon Daunno) as a guitar pickin’
country crooner and Jud Fry (Patrick Vaill) not as a brooding hulk, but as a
haunted and almost nondescript outsider, psychopath-as-nonentity, Dexter Morgan
without the confidence or competence…well, those are choices of trope, where
the actor must serve the message.
In
the end, no review or description is quite preparation for this Oklahoma! and what it tries to
accomplish, and everyone will have his own reading on just what that is and how
well it succeeds, to the point, I think, where whether you like it or not is irrelevant. Me? It actually struck me as a
production that, in every respect, would have been perfectly at home in the
late 1960s, an example of the counter-culture generation rebelling against
authority and showing the Establishment what’s really what, in a manner both critical and affectionate.
Or
as John McClain might have put it: Yippee Ki-Yay, motherfucker.
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