In Which Hank "Reviews" Daniel Fish's Oklahoma! presented by Broadway Dallas

Let me begin by saying that Oklahoma! is one of my least favorite R&H musicals, beating out perhaps only State Fair for that distinction. I don’t like Westerns or things set in the “West”, I don’t like farmers, I don’t like cowhands (I’m friends with neither 😉), I don’t like hick accents, the “thar”s or “fir”s or “agin” or poorly conjugated verbs. There are some great songs, don’t get me wrong; I mean, it’s my least favorite, but I still like it. Now, this cuts both ways: Since I’m not in love with Oklahoma! to begin with, I’m less emotionally invested in how it’s produced and in fact might welcome any interpretation or reimagining that would shake up all these dern territory folk and make them a bit more interesting, iffin’ you see ma point. (Ugh. See? Hick talk sucks). I totally respect and can appreciate trying to update an old moldy musical, making it fresh and relatable to current tastes and styles, even if I might wish to see an unaltered  version from the 50s.

However, and perhaps more importantly, I’m just done in general with the sparse stylized single static set designs and lack of full orchestra that has been predominant these last several years of musical theater, so of course this didn’t thrill me, though I’ve come to accept that this is how things are now. I just assumed that there would be no real set to speak of in this version, and I was right. Again, this bothered me, but it is not unique to Daniel Fish’s current production of Oklahoma.

I’m just old fashioned. I like curtains. I like changing backdrops. I like little scenes front of curtain while a new scene/set is being put in place behind the curtain. If the scene takes place in a school room, I want to see desks and a blackboard. It if then changes to outside in a park near a gazebo, I want a gazebo and I want trees. I know, I know, how literal of me. But I’m old. I want to see a play, not what looks like the cast sitting around a table workshopping it, working on their delivery. Those days are gone, however. I’m not bitter.

Moving to the music (they’re called musicals, you know), I like more than one viola. I like hearing an oboe. Some timpani. Seeing the soft glow from an actual orchestra pit. I no longer find it “cool” or “edgy” to see the musicians on stage. Put ‘em in the pit where they belong. I can’t remember the last time we saw a musical where the “orchestra” was not on stage (or under the stage, waves at The Sound of Music and Miguel Cantu IV). Tommy, Jesus Christ Super Star, In The Heights, Rocky Horror, Rent, West Side Story, Oklahoma.

Distorted electric guitar is fine in Rent, or JCST, or Tommy, but not Carousel or Brigadoon.

So, all of these things are my Angry Old Man issues with most current productions of musicals and are not specific to this version of Oklahoma. Given that I expected all of this going in, I perhaps was not as bothered as some with the staging and direction of this production. I’m resigned to having to watch “not your grandma’s musical” and have that built in already. However, this needs to be executed well, and unfortunately, this was not the case.

I enjoy on-key singing. I guess I’m funny that way. Almost without exception the entire cast of this production was a bit pitchy as Randy Jackson used to say, and even when they hit the right notes, sometimes the delivery was questionable, as was the case with Sean Grandillo’s almost falsetto singing at times. During “People Will Say We’re In Love” it was often hard at times to determine who was singing, because Curly and Sasha Hutchings’  Laurey were basically singing in the same range. Not a fan. To me, this was the production’s biggest failure, its lack of a strong vocal ensemble.

There was also the anachronistic stylizing that has also become de rigueur as of late: The cast would sing in the traditional manner, then suddenly grab a wired mic and sing into that. The change in volume and dynamics was jarring, and even if this was the point, it just removed some of the inherent charm of these songs and also jerked you out of the moment, calling attention to the artificiality of the whole situation. Add to this the also now ubiquitous use of a live video feed projected onto the backdrop. All cool, and artsy, but again, overly artificial, and I almost always get pulled out of the moment and start watching the camera man in such situations, and wonder how they walk in the dark, or what kind of night vision lens they are using. Should I look at the screen, or the actor on stage? Did they even have wireless hidef video in turn of the century Oklahoma Territory? This worked when we saw Network on stage, as the whole point of that show was how media and technology effects and influences our lives, but in the grass prairies of 1906 Oklahoma it seems to be just a stunt.

Now, the ending, the wedding scene. I didn’t really have a problem with that. As it started to come to an end, Cindy said (in what seemed full room volume for everyone to hear), “this is EFFED UP.” (and yes she said “EFF” because she’s demure that way 😉). I mean, plot-wise, it really doesn’t differ from the traditional production, it was just more graphic. This part reminded me of The Bride from Kill Bill, in a good way. Who doesn’t want to hear a rousing reprise of the title song sung whilst drenched in blood from the person that your newly betrothed husband just shot to death in cold blood? And they sang that final reprise with a lot of anger and aggression, while Laurey stared out vacantly.

Cut to black.

So there you go.

Oh, and the "ballet." That could be an entire post on its own, so I'll spare you.