Review: There’s a Dark, Golden Haze in This Reclaimed ‘Oklahoma!’

Review: There’s a Dark, Golden Haze in This Reclaimed ‘Oklahoma!’

BRANTLEY I would. The ending has been slightly altered since I first saw this production three years ago (part of Bard SummerScape at Annandale-on-Hudson) but not enough to change the sense that it’s a bit of a cheat. The feel-bad conclusion is the most open and most facile act of rebellion on Mr. Fish’s part.

GREEN And yet I understand what he was aiming for. With all its balancing of light and dark, his “Oklahoma!” is a rollicking good time: The jokes have never been funnier, the merry songs merrier. But there was no way he was going to leave us, in 2018, with an uncomplicated feeling about the workings of justice in America or about the wisdom of having formed a union from incompatible states. To that extent, I understood the crash landing he engineered.

BRANTLEY Let’s shift back to what feels so fresh about the show, and so true to its source at the same time. I felt the characters owned their songs and their story in a way I’d never seen before. How did you like the music (directed by Nathan Koci, with orchestrations and arrangements by Daniel Kluger)?

GREEN It was a joy to hear how beautifully Rodgers’s music adapted itself to the country sound coming from the seven musicians, who were also part of the stage community. The banjo, mandolin and steel guitar were right at home in a way that the traditional arrangements wouldn’t have been.

BRANTLEY And how about the rockabilly inflections of our still adolescent-seeming Curly (a fabulous Damon Daunno). His performance conveyed the pure youth of this brave new world, with all its contradictions and energy. The same was true of our especially callow Will Parker (James Davis) and his love-the-one-you’re-with girlfriend, Ado Annie. She’s played by Ali Stroker, who turns her wheelchair into an all-conquering tool that matches her sly, vanquishing smile. Michael Nathanson is refreshingly free of stereotypical cobwebs as her sometime fiancé, a concupiscent peddler.

GREEN I would just add that, for all its renovations and delicious youth, this “Oklahoma!” is also about acquiring wisdom. For me, the heart of the show is when the elderly (that is, 50-ish) Aunt Eller (Mary Testa, sharp and hilarious) consoles Laurey, and us, after the violence we have witnessed. She tells us we have to be able to handle the bitter of life or we don’t deserve the sweet. We have to be “hearty.” A good message right now.

BRANTLEY Yes, except she turns out to be a less benign force than we might have expected, as the foremost avatar of prairie justice. Ms. Testa’s performance, like so many of the others here, lets us look beyond the operetta poses of yore and see a real, gritty survivor — a status that turns out to involve moral compromise. In a way, she’s the ambivalent heart of this newly energized, gloriously conflicted show.

GREEN And of our tired, gloriously conflicted country.

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