Oklahoma! (with exclamation mark) is an all American musical frothed up from a ‘birth of the nation’ story about the formation of the eponymous state. The historical context which hangs over it as a light mist rather than dark cloud is the antagonism between the cowboys and the farmers (the native Americans whose land they all grabbed don’t get a look in), a situation alluded to in the hoedown song at the top of act two, ‘the Farmer and the Cowman’. As to the rest of it you could sum it up with a, ‘will she won’t she,’ go to the social dance and basket auction with sunny-dispositioned, Curly, or creepy loner, Jud, who is into whatever passed for porn at the time? The plot is further un-complicated by the fact that Curly loves her and she him.
Now whereas Laurey is a complicated and difficult girl who refuses to go to the hop with Curly because he’s dithered too long, simple Ado Annie is a girl who ‘Cain’t Say No’, to pretty much any buck or gent who shows her a bit of attention and plies her with a little sweet talking. Her dilemma then is, should she marry wide-eyed and honest cowboy, Will Parker, who loves her, or the louche, smooth-talking, itinerant peddler, Ali Hakim, who doesn’t? It’s a puzzler isn’t it? But this gossamer plot is not what is going to get you to see this show.
Anyone old enough to remember ‘Family Favourites’ on the BBC Light Programme will be familiar with most of the songs. The reason is simple: it is stuffed full of memorable tunes that were regularly requested by and for our lads overseas. As ‘feel good’ numbers go it doesn’t get much better than, ‘Oh What A Beautiful Mornin’, which opens the show. The rest of act one just keeps them coming. The strength of the numbers (and an innovation at the time of the first production in 1943) is the way they were written to portray and develop character. In this the songs are well served by the strong cast led by Ashley Day as Curly and Charlotte Wakefield as Laurey. The sheer brilliance of these two pretty much justifies the price of a ticket alone. If ‘Britain’s Got Fulgence’ were a TV show they’d walk it.
Bashing heads together with a cosh of homespun good sense, Belinda Lang’s Aunt Eller provides a bit of terra firma, whilst Gary Wilmot’s, Ali, in a suit which should warn fathers of daughters a mile off, gives some comic diversion without leaning on caricature. Lucy May Barker as Ado Annie convinced us she was a pushover worth the effort.
Nic Greenshields deserves a mention as the only actor called upon to do any difficult acting, managing to get some pathos into the unsympathetic character of Jud who in one scene is invited to top himself by a (one supposes) momentarily distracted Curly.
As a revival of the, ‘here’s one I made earlier and it’s perfect’ kind, this is a ‘whee ha!’ of a production that will have you coming up for air as the nostalgia washes over you. ★★★★☆ Graham Wyles 19/05/15 at Bath Theatre Royal
