Reimagined 'Oklahoma!' revival is not OK

‘OKLAHOMA!’: Ali Stroker. Photo: Teddy Wolff

OKLAHOMA!
Book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II
Music by Richard Rodgers
Based on Green Grow the Lilacs by Lynn Riggs
Original choreography by Agnes DeMille
Choreographed by John Heginbotham
Directed by Daniel Fish
Circle In The Square
235 West 50th Street
212-239-6200
www.OklahomaBroadway.com

By David NouNou

There is a difference between reimagining a classic and just plain hubris from a director run amok. Sam Mendes and Rob Marshall brilliantly reimagined the 1997 and 2014 Cabaret revivals, but director Daniel Fish totally annihilates Oklahoma!

Earlier this month, director Sam Gold desecrated Shakespeare’s King Lear with pretentious overindulgence. Now director Daniel Fish has managed to obliterate and underwhelm the legendary Oklahoma! with pretentious minimalization. What was once a glorious, melodic milestone in musical history has become a barren dustbowl of Oklahoma! Agnes DeMille and Rogers and Hammerstein are rolling over in their graves. What is supposed to be reimagined is just another way of saying it is being done cheaply, gimmicky and experimentally, hoping something in it will stick.

As you walk into the auditorium of Circle in the Square, there are guns all over the walls of the theater. If this is a metaphor for the times we live in, then give me the escapism of the Oklahoma! of 1943. A revival of any musical from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s is meant as pure escapism and entertainment. Hence the term “revival,” an escape to times that were gentler and to give us a chance to enjoy a beloved musical as it was created.

Mr. Fish has stripped Oklahoma! of any breath, color, insight, delicacy, intimacy, choreography, costumes, subtle acting, and beautiful singing. Instead, our senses are assaulted with characters either over acting and screaming their parts or being lackadaisically laid back. Lackluster voices are substituted for beautiful harmonizing. The theater is lit brightly throughout the show, but for some inexplicable reason there are two scenes that are performed in total darkness, both of them involving Jud Fry, the villain (Patrick Vaill): one in the smokehouse with Curly, the hero (Damon Daunno) in the first act; the other with Laurey, the leading lady (Rebecca Naomi Jones) in the second act, and both scenes using microphones for over amplification, again done in pitch black darkness. All that aside, the biggest offense comes at the beginning of Act II where Agnes DeMille’s beautiful ballet (the dream sequence where Laurey is torn between Curly and Jud) has been totally eliminated and substituted with a vulgar, modern dance replete with running around the stage, writhing across the stage, aerobic moves throughout the stage, all of which last for what seems an eternity.

Ironically, the folks you should be rooting for aren’t the people as written in the original version. The person you end up rooting for is Jud Fry, the villain. Patrick Vaill imbues Jud with all the qualities of a bad guy but also gives him a touch of humanity that the rest of the cast lacks. You actually feel sorry for his circumstances that have driven him to this point. Curly, who is supposed to be a strapping horseman, is nothing but a wastrel who yodels. There is nothing really redeeming about him as portrayed by Damon Daunno. As for this Laurey, as played by Rebecca Naomi Jones, she is a strapping gal who claims she is afraid of Jud, but in reality, she can out lick him with one hand tied behind her back. Casting should have been more exacting here.

After last year’s abysmal reimagined revival of Carousel, this year’s desecration of Oklahoma!, what next? Have another avant-garde director reimagine a revival of The Sound Of Music with the Von Trapp children doubling up as Hitler’s SS storm troopers?

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published April 10, 2019
Reviewed at April 9, 2019 press performance.