Oklahoma!
Reviewed by Steven Leigh Morris
Ahmanson Theatre
Thru Oct. 16
RECOMMENDED
For full review, see Stage Feature.
Composer-lyricists Rodgers and Hammerstein were the grandsons of Jewish immigrants to New York and understood very well both the American pressures of assimilation and the spurning of outsiders that culminates in the sacrifice of those who don’t belong. (The stream of victims is endless and ever-changing.) Their musical Oklahoma! opened on Broadway in 1943; central to it is the sacrifice, under dubious circumstances, of an outsider to the local community named Jud (Christopher Bannow) — a tragic thread in a musical that otherwise traffics in optimism. (“Oh, what a beautiful morning; oh, what a beautiful day. I’ve got a beautiful feeling, everything’s going my way.”) This was being sung on Broadway at the very moment the United States and its allies had prevailed in a war against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
Director Daniel Fish’s re-imagining/deconstruction of this traditional classic has arrived in a Broadway touring production at the Ahmanson Theatre. It opens with lead character Curly (Sean Grandillo, with guitar in hand and wearing chaps and boots) crooning “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” — but there’s a twist of mockery to his electrifying rendition. When Sasha Hutchings’s Laurey joins him for a later verse, the effect is beyond mesmerizing. She glares, she knocks over chairs, she tosses back her mane of hair. She throws aside husks of corn, uncaring. She could be Medusa, smiling with a kind of feline seductiveness before plucking out your heart. This is not my grandmother’s Oklahoma!
Among many questions provoked by Fish’s much heralded staging of this musical: Why didn’t they just do Sweeney Todd instead – that is, why not stage an overt revenge melodrama about jealousy and a miscarriage of justice? Why rather impose that redo on Rodgers and Hammerstein’s valentine to American optimism?
For full review, see Stage Feature
Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., dwntwn.; Tues.-Fri., 8 pm; Sat., 2 & 8 pm; Sun., 1 & 6:30 pm; thru Oct. 16. https://centertheatregroup.org Running time: 2 hours and 45 minutes with one intermission.
