Passage III

HUMANITIES: Passage A is adapted from the article “America, America: Two Plays about the Country’s Complexities” by Hilton Als (©2010 by Conde Nast). Passage B is adapted from the article “O.K. Chorale: An English Take on Rodgers and Hammerstein” by John Lahr (©2002 by Conde Nast).

Passage A by Hilton Als

Molly Smith, the artistic director of Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., directed the company’s current revival of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II’s first musical collaboration, Oklahoma! Smith’s production is extraordinary in thought and execution and utterly satisfying on so many levels. Smith’s conceit is entirely original: instead of taking this nearly perfect show at face value, she has dug back into the history of Oklahoma itself. Sold to the United States as part of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, Oklahoma was opened for settlement in 1889. By the time it became a state, eighteen years later, the Territory, as it was known, was populated by white settlers from other parts of the country, as well as a number of emancipated slaves and forcibly resettled Native Americans, who braved drought, harsh economic times, and often brutal and complicated racial interactions to make the Territory their home.

Smith doesn’t explain any of this in her production—who would rewrite Rodgers and Hammerstein?— but it shows in her casting. As in the original Broadway production, which opened in 1943, there are no stars onstage. Smith raises the roof not so much with “color- blind” casting as by paying attention to how the characters might have looked if they were actual Oklahomans of the period. The wonderful Aunt Eller (E. Faye Butler) and her niece, Laurey (the buoyant and complex Eleasha Gamble), are black, while Laurey’s suitor, Curly (the outstanding Nicholas Rodriguez), could be taken for Native American. This deviation from standard casting brings a new force to the musical—which itself changed musicals forever by introducing plot and narrative development into what had previously been considered a frivolous genre. Altogether, the actors seem relieved to be not segregated in black or white shows but together in an utterly American one.

The afternoon I saw Oklahoma!, it was clear that the members of the audience didn’t feel overwhelmed by a “classic”; instead, they were as moved as I was by the humility and hope that Smith and her company brought to the show.

Passage B by John Lahr

Because of Oklahoma!’s enormous subsequent influence, its novelties—no opening ensemble number, chorus girls in long dresses, dancers who don’t appear until late in the first act, the integrated score—have lost some of their original lustre. In the Royal National Theatre’s three-hour revival (now at New York’s Gershwin Theatre), directed by Trevor Nunn, the show’s heady mixture of wonder and ambition is best captured in its production values. Anthony Ward’s picturesque set immediately submerges us in a gorgeous world of folk innocence.

In the making of musicals, Nunn is a four-star general. His stage pictures spill over with meticulous, articulate energy. But technique, which can make the show work, is not enough to make it wonderful. Here, I think, the issue of cultural chemistry comes into play. American optimism has its root in abundance and in the vastness of the land that Oklahoma! celebrates. Britain, on the other hand, is an island the size of Utah. Its culture is one of scarcity; its preferred idiom is irony—a language of limits. In the retranslation of an award-winning English version of an American classic to its natural Broadway habitat, an emotional lopsidedness has become evident, particularly in the casting.

The linchpins of the show are Aunt Eller, played by the gritty, droll comedienne Andrea Martin, who is American and nails it, and the feisty lovelorn Laurey, played by the fine-voiced, demure Josefina Gabrielle, who is English and doesn’t. It’s not talent that’s at issue here—Gabrielle is the first Laurey to dance her own Dream Ballet—but national character. The show is about Western women, and Gabrielle’s Laurey lacks that very American sense of gumption, a combination of buoyancy and backbone.

In his memoir, “Musical Stages,” Richard Rodgers averred that the show’s opening scene—a cowboy strolling onto the stage where a single woman is churning butter—announced to the audience, “Watch out! This is a different kind of musical.” He went on to say, "Everything in the production was made to conform to the simple open-air spirit of the story; this was essential, and certainly a rarity in the musical theatre." Trevor Nunn’s version of Oklahoma! preserves the crowd-pleasing commercial zest of the original; but on the evening I saw the show only a handful of audience members stood to applaud the hardworking cast, confirming my suspicion that the open-air spirit of the evening had been slowly leached away.