Oklahoma!
Synopsis
Oklahoma! History
Richard Rodgers’ successful, 25-year partnership with Lorenz Hart ended when Hart could not commit to writing for the new production, ‘Green Grow the Lilacs’. They had written five musicals to great acclaim, the longest running being their last one, ‘By Jupiter’ performed in 1942. Hart’s increasing dependence on alcohol and his very real feelings of despair led him to withdraw from working on ‘Green Grow the Lilacs’, the play by Lynn Riggs. Rodgers turned to his old friend Oscar Hammerstein II as lyricist for the project. They had worked briefly together in 1928 and again in 1935 and a new dynamic partnership was born.
It didn’t seem like a promising project at the start. The play had enjoyed only moderate success. The name for the new show was to be Oklahoma! and it proved to boast a new and radical art form. The show started with a slow solo, whereas musicals of the period opened with rousing chorus numbers. There was an onstage death, the first time that had happened in musical theatre, there was a ballet dream sequence, again a first, with choreography by Agnes de Mille, following her first significantly recognised ballet ‘Rodeo’ of 1942, whose score was by Aaron Copland, and which she staged for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.
The new partnership worked ideally. Rodgers and Hart had worked from melody to lyrics, the Hammerstein collaboration operated in the opposite direction. Hammerstein would write words to suit the plot and Rodgers would compose a melody. Fitting music to lyrics changed the style of Rodgers’s composition, becoming more mature in his musical style.
Opening night was 31 March, 1943, to a less than full house at St. James Theatre, New York. There were preproduction doubts about the show: it was based on a not hugely successful play, Hammerstein had not enjoyed a success for some time and Rodgers was without his hit making partner, Lorenz Hart. The audience was in no doubt when the curtain came down that a sure fire triumph had been born. The show ran for 2,248 performances, with another 1,151 playing in London when it opened in 1947. London audiences were still reeling from the war years and the spectacle of Oklahoma! was overwhelming. It had a huge effect on the London musical scene which was still rooted in the 1930’s shows of Noel Coward and Ivor Novello.
Oklahoma! became a near permanent feature of the touring companies in both the USA and the UK through the decades and 2022 saw Daniel Fish’s adaptation for a modern-day audience play to high acclaim in the West End: Oklahoma! won two Olivier Awards: Best Musical Revival, and Best Actor in a Musical (Arthur Darvill). Not bad for an 80 year old musical!
Oklahoma! Synopsis
Act 1
Act I – On a radiant summer morning in Indian Territory not long after the turn of the century, Aunt Eller sits on her porch churning butter and looking out over her farmstead. Curly, a local ranch hand, comes to call. Curly and Eller’s niece, Laurey, have a lot in common – both are equally smitten with the other, and both are too proud and stubborn to admit it. When Curly grandly offers to take Laurey to the box social that evening, Laurey claims that he can’t escort her in style and refuses to believe that he has rented a classy rig for the occasion. Jud Fry, Laurey’s hired hand, settles the matter by announcing that he will take her to the social and because she is scared of Jud, who has a morose, vindictive temperament, she is too frightened to turn him down. Curly invites Aunt Eller to ride with him.
Laurey’s friend, Ado Annie, is caught between two fellows too. Will Parker has just returned from Kansas City where he earned $50 in a rodeo – the exact sum Ado Annie’s father, Andrew Carnes, told Will he had to come up with if he wanted to marry her. However, during Will’s absence Ado Annie has become transfixed by the Persian peddler man, Ali Hakim, whose sales pitches always leave her swooning. Ado Annie may not know which way to turn but her father does: Will, since he already spent the $50 on wedding gifts for Annie and technically no longer has the cash, has lost his chance at marriage – while Ali Hakim has been so forward with Annie that nothing short of a shotgun wedding will do!
Laurey is confused about her love for Curly, and about Jud, of whom she is terrified, but has used his invitation just to make Curly jealous. After a short reconciliation between the two, Curly goes to see Jud in his smokehouse. Curly paints a beautiful picture of just how popular Jud would be – at his own funeral and there is an angry confrontation about Laurey. Feeling mocked, alone now in his room, Jud confronts himself, his lonely fantasies, his bleak existence that fills him with anger and violence.
Laurey still wants to clear her mind between Curly and Jud. Her girl friends ridicule her and offer their own homely advice; she drifts into a dream – a ballet sequence in which she is to marry Curly, but he is killed by Jud, who abducts her. As she wakens, both men arrive, and Jud hauls her off to the party, leaving Curly dejected.
Act II – At the box social that night lots of men bid for Laurey’s hamper but, as the bidding rises, so does the tension as Jud and Curly square off. Curly sells his saddle, his horse and then even his gun to raise enough cash to buy the hamper and the right to escort Laurey, which frustrates and angers Jud. When Jud corners Laurey in the barn later on, her frightened calls for help bring Curly to her side. Jud runs off, and finally, Laurey and Curly confess their love for each other. Ali Hakim, still trying to manoeuvre his way out of marrying Ado Annie, contrives to bid $50 for all the gifts Will bought in Kansas City. With cash in hand, and a few rules in mind, Will approaches Ado Annie again, and this time they set the date.
Three weeks later, Laurey and Curly are married. Gertie Cummings, an annoying flirt who couldn’t get her hands on Curly, has managed to also snare a husband – Ali Hakim. Will and Ado Annie are hitched as well and everyone is celebrating. The wedding festivities pall, however, when Jud Fry stumbles in, uninvited, unwelcome and drunk. He gets into a fight with Curly and, in the ensuing melée, the drunken Jud falls on his own knife and is killed. Curly’s friends don’t want him to have to spend his wedding night in jail and so, a trial is quickly held on the spot and Curly is acquitted. With their friends and loved ones waving them on, Curly and Laurey drive off on their honeymoon, “in a surrey with the fringe on top”.
Source: NSMT – USA