Reviews 2007
Reviews 2007
✭✭✭✭✩
by Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein,
directed by Donna Feore
Stratford Festival, Festival Theatre, Stratford
May 29-November 4, 2007
"Cain’t Say No"
The Stratford Festival’s first-ever production of the classic musical “Oklahoma!” is one of the most joyful musicals ever staged in the Festival Theatre. With a dynamite cast, unfussy design, imaginative choreography and its succession of great songs, this is a show that aims to please above all else. This goal, however, tends to gloss over the dark undercurrents in the work that are what make it great musical in the first place.
The simple story parallels two love triangles. The serious triangle involves Laurey, a young woman on a farm in the Oklahoma Territory in the early 20th century, who loves the cowboy Curly. He loves her, but each is too proud to admit it. To spite Curly, Laurey says she’ll go to the box social (a party where girls’ lunch baskets are auctioned off for charity) with her farmhand Jud Fry. Jud, however, is pathologically obsessed with Laurey. His moodiness and habit of collecting pornographic postcards make one worry should Laurey find herself alone with him. The comic triangle involves Ado Annie, the girl who “Cain’t Say No”, who loves whatever man she’s with at the moment. She can’t choose between the itinerant Persian peddler Ali Hakim, who just wants to get her in bed, and the cowboy Will Parker, who wants to marry her if only he can get the $50.00 together that her father demands. All these tensions come to a head at two communal meetings in Act 2.
Because of songs like the “Surrey with the Fringe on Top”, “Oh What a Beautiful Mornin’” and “People Will Say We’re in Love”, people tend to assume that the musical is a nostalgia piece about a time when America was a more innocent place. In fact, unpleasant tensions underlie almost every aspect of the story. The song in Act 2 “The Farmer and the Cowman” underscores a clash between two ways of living in the West, the first depending on fences and property the second on freedom of movement. “Kansas City” seems to point out how naïve the Oklahomans like Will are who visit there, but at the same time describes an urban life and morality that will eventually crowd out both the farmer and the cowman. The souvenir Will brings back is a nudie photo in a kaleidoscope tube. Later it’s revealed that this tube contains a hidden knife and is used as a way of tricking someone to come close enough to be stabbed. Peddlers like Ali Hakim are already bringing some of the city’s wares like scanty underwear and pornographic pictures into the country.
Just as she de-emphasized the negative aspects of Dickensian London in “Oliver!” last year including a whitewash of the character Fagin, this year director and choreographer Donna Feore de-emphasizes the negative aspects of Hammerstein’s Oklahoma Territory. She choreographs “The Farmer and the Cowman” not as the brawl Max Reimer made it in the Theatre Aquarius production last year but as more of a competitive dance. More serious is her interpretation of Jud Fry. In Reimer’s production Jud was a man who is mentally slow and is clearly being toyed with first by Laurey and then by Curly in “Pore Jud Is Daid” when Curly suggests not too subtly that Curly should kill himself. In Feore’s version Jud is simply a dangerous brute. Reimer staged the final fight between Curly and Jud with more ambiguity so that the impromptu trial really appeared as a show trial to clear Curly of wrongdoing just so there would be a happy ending. Feore makes it clear that Fry falls on his own knife and speeds through the trial scene so that the objections to it don’t have time to register. Though the Theatre Aquarius version did not have the same resources that Stratford has, in many ways it was a more satisfying experience because it showed the world of the musical to be much more complex.
Where Feore does score is in the 15-minute-long dream ballet that ends Act 1 where Laurey imagines being married to Curly. Jud suddenly takes his place, suggesting at some level that Laurey fears Jud’s less honorable desires may also be shared by Curly. Unlike in some productions the actors portraying Laurey, Curly and Jud all take part in the ballet. People who already know the Laurey, Blythe Wilson, as a remarkable singer will be delighted to find she is also a remarkable dancer.
Wilson is a pleasure throughout with a bright, clear soprano and vibrant personality. Shaw Festival regular Nora McLellan makes her first appearance at Stratford in the role of Aunt Eller. She has a winning combination of a tough-as-nails exterior combined with common sense and a wry sense of humour. McLellan makes it quite believable that this woman has a strong enough personailty to break up a fight between pig-headed men. Lindsay Thomas is not as effective as Ado Annie. There are ways to give this character a bit of self-knowledge and make her less of a caricature. The squeaky little girl voice Thomas uses obscures the words in the dialogue and the songs and we thus lose much of their humour. Stephanie Graham has come up with an irritating laugh for Gertie Cummings, but it would be better if it seemed natural instead of put on.
Among the men Dan Chameroy is excellent at Curly’s dialogue but his crooning singing style that has worked so well in other musicals is much too suave for someone who is supposed to be a cowboy. His performance is eclipsed by that of Kyle Blair as Will. He has the kind of strong, open voice and ringing tones a Curly should have and he has the more natural look and gestural language of a cowboy. His dance solos are spectacular especially in the big “Kansas City” number where he even does a series of lariat tricks.
David W. Keeley is well cast as Jud and could certainly have given us a character as complex as George Masswohl did for Theatre Aquarius if he had been so directed. What he portrays is a character who is so malevolent it is hard to understand how Laurey could have hired him in the first place let alone use him as ploy against Curly. Jud really has to evoke some sense of pity to make Laurey’s actions credible. Jonathan Ellul is very funny as Ali Hakim and thankfully does not portray him as Middle Eastern caricature. As an indication of how strong the male ensemble is it includes former Nylon Mark Cassius as Ike, Jamie McKnight as Fred, who played title role in Ross Petty’s “Aladdin” in Toronto and on tour, and Paul Nolan as Slim, who was such an effective Curly for Theatre Aquarius last year.
Feore and designer Patrick Clark have done a fine job of transferring a show that cries out for a proscenium stage to the Festival’s thrust stage. Clark has created a foreshortened, weather-beaten farmhouse reminiscent of a Grant Wood painting that recedes from the stage during the big dance numbers. His costumes, drab for the men and pastel for the women, are in keeping with the period. His best idea, conceived with lighting designer Alan Brodie, is to have a series of seven lightboxes on either side of the stage to suggest the big open skies of Oklahoma. They are shaped to look like sheets blowing in the wind on a clothesline and lights inside are coordinated to glow and subtly change into all the colours one imagines for early morning, noon, sunset and evening.
If Feore takes rather too black-and-white a view of the drama, she compensates for it with a highly varied and imaginative sequence of dances that draw more on the traditions of ballet than show dancing. The “Kansas City” sequence and the “Dream Ballet” of Act 1 are both thrilling and remain the dance highlights of the show. As conductor Berthold Carrière gives a vibrant account of the score.
For anyone who love show tunes and dancing, this year Stratford really has a winning pair of musicals. “Oklahoma!” with Rodgers and ballet and “My One and Only” with Gershwin and tap complement each other nicely with their different styles and moods. Even if “Oklahoma!” is a bit too cheery for its own good, it’s hard not to be bowled over by the sheer talent on display in the music and especially in the dance.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Blythe Wilson and Dan Chameroy. ©David Hou.
2007-06-18
Oklahoma!