Oklahoma!, Wyndham's Theatre

Director Daniel Fish's Tony-winning revival of Oklahoma! transfers from its critically-acclaimed run at the Young Vic to the West End's Wyndham's Theatre for 2023.

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Oklahoma!, Young Vic Theatre review ★★★★★

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1906-set musical Oklahoma! is a tricky one to revive in a way that appeases the tastes of woke, contemporary audiences. Its fusty, chauvinistic songs and plot line of cowboys putting a financial downpayment on their desired farm girls under the guise of buying pies to fix the school roof rightly raise eyebrows. So talk of Daniel Fish’s new, visionary production two-stepping its way across the pond – with the backing of the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical following its premiere on Broadway in 2019 – was understandably an exciting prospect.

Said production has arrived at the Young Vic, co-directed here with Jordan Fein, and… it’s very much a play in two halves, with a gloriously raw, gritty and stylistically clever first act getting all of its ducks in a row, only to lose its way in an overly experimental, confusing second act.

The company of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! at the Young Vic © Co-set Designer Laura Jellinek & Grace Laubacher, Costume Designer Terese Wadden, Lighting Designer Scott Zielinski, Projection Designer Joshua Thorson. Photography by Marc Brenner

On a long, traverse stage, laden with cans of Bud Light and corn by co-designers Laura Jellinek and Grace Laubacher, with Scott Zielinski’s bright lighting turned up across the auditorium for the majority of the show, we're brought up close to a cast decked out in Terese Wadden’s assortment of old-meets-new getup: fringe-trimmed chaps, denim, and cowboy boots and hats. A somewhat sidelined Curly (Arthur Darvill, who delivers a strong performance despite being depicted as a washed up country star cradling his acoustic guitar) kicks off the musical’s camp opening number ‘Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’’ with a subtle tint of cynicism – a welcome warning this is no average run at the show.

We meet the object of his affection Laurey, who is portrayed by rising stage star Anoushka Lucas (Henry V, After Life) not as a distressed damsel but a sullen young woman understandably miffed to have come of age only to be sexualised by the men who in the same breath recall knowing her as a child. Fisher does away with the dainty dance of her first number ‘Many a New Day’, having the women angrily strip and snap corn instead. So far, so refreshing.

We also meet two of the story’s more progressive female figures: Laurey's gun-wielding guardian Aunt Eller (Liza Sadovy, fresh from her Olivier-winning turn in Cabaret, delivering another firecracker of a performance) and lustful pal Ado Annie (Marisha Wallace, bringing incredible vocals and whip-smart humour to the role).

The company of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! at the Young Vic © Co-set Designer Laura Jellinek & Grace Laubacher, Costume Designer Terese Wadden, Lighting Designer Scott Zielinski, Projection Designer Joshua Thorson. Photography by Marc Brenner

It’s as the plot hones in on the story’s antagonist Jud (a sombre and venomous performance from Patrick Vaill, who has been with the show since its inception at Bard College) that it loses its way. While not the desired effect, it's fitting both stage and auditorium are plunged into total darkness for this, the first of several unsuccessfully experimental scenes. As the light returns, designer Joshua Thorson has a video camera zoom in on Vaill’s frightened eyes as he reveals fears of living a life alone. Later, Jud’s attempts to sabotage Curly and Laurey’s happiness are muted, almost flipped. Fisher even has Laurey kiss him back, not unwillingly, at her wedding. Why the attempt to let the story’s villain off the hook and have us pity his fragile masculinity instead is a mystery.

Most jarring is the scene following Jud’s death, where the façade of naturalism is swapped for a cross-fire of exchanges delivered as flatly as a first read through of a script. Why? And while our leads riding off into the sunset would have been a disappointingly conventional ending, the reprisal of the title number was also baffling, for reasons not worth spoiling here.

Marisha Wallace, James Davis and Greg Hicks in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! at the Young Vic © Co-set Designer Laura Jellinek & Grace Laubacher, Costume Designer Terese Wadden, Lighting Designer Scott Zielinski, Projection Designer Joshua Thorson. Photography by Marc Brenner

Still, the second act was also not without highs. An interpretive dance, swapped in for Laurey’s dream sequence and performed by Marie-Astrid Mence in a glittery dress reading ‘Dream Baby Dream’, alluded to the state’s dark history of racism and contradictions within the promise of the American Dream.

Ado Annie and Will Parker’s ‘All Er Nothin’’, performed with lashings of saucy verve by Wallace and James Davis, whose performance builds steadily to this moment, offered much needed light relief.

This reviewer’s quibbles with Fisher’s Oklahoma! are all stylistic. The show is performed by an unwaveringly talented cast, supported by a tight on-stage band who are conducted – often with nods of his head – by musical director and accordion player Tom Brady.

It's not a perfect production but it earns its stars for being provocative, daring and proof there’s ‘plen'y of hope’ for breathing fresh life into Golden Age musicals.

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