When the rouser finale number “Oklahoma” leaves a nasty taste in your mouth, you know this isn’t your Grandma and Grandpa’s musical. As if to insist on the truth of it-or to challenge our common belief. “And the land we belong to is GRAND!” Near the end of the show, the sobbing, bloodied bride Laurey (Sasha Hutchings) screams out that line of the song, and then again, straight into the faces of the audience. Fish the iconoclast is hell-bent on de-construction, and won’t let us off the hook-and perhaps little more than one week after Uvalde, it could be said we deserve to look in that mirror.

This “new” Oklahoma! reflects something we all know: that the sunny national story we liked to tell ourselves back in the day (say, when we were actually saving the world) skimmed over a lot of darker history. On opening night of Broadway Dallas’ presentation, dozens of attendees bailed at intermission, leaving a noticeably thinned audience for Act Two.Īn initial sense of audience good will toward this old warhorse of the American musical had faded by then, replaced by unease-and that was the intention.Įxperimental director Daniel Fish’s desire to re-work the classic Rodgers & Hammerstein musical is theatrically understandable. “I’ve never seen the show before, or even the movie,” she said. The woman by the elevator looked a bit grim.

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