One of several marvelous dance sequences
Dear friends and readers,
Friday nights on PBS I’ve become a faithful watcher of Great Performances, and this past one for 3 hours I reveled in the marvelous British National Royal Theater production of Rogers and Hammerstein’s Oklahhoma as directed by Trevor Nunn: this the same group that brought us the unforgettable Yorkshire plays (medieval cycle, words by Tony Harrison), and part of the exhilaration arises from doing it in the round with an audience close in. It’s famous in the US for making a singing star out of Hugh Jackson.
Jackson played Curly as self-deprecating, no threat to anyone, courteous even to old maid aunts
I recommend watching it because it turns the musical into its bare-bones (sort of an outline effect), tones it down and so brings out subtleties in characterization. I don’t know if I’ve said enough on this blog how much I love musicals. I know often the content is deplorable; so too are some of the plots of older and more recent operas too.
So I want, at the same time, to point out that the distinction often made between this musical and its near-companion in time, place, and composers, Carousel, often (rightly) condemned as celebrating an abusive relationship, reinforcing the worst of sexist portrayals of sex outside marriage, absurd in its heavenly ending, is false. As Carousel can be done with equal intense pleasure from the music, dance and when done (as I once saw it in London) with the same bareness and toned down, becomes a downright subversive thrust by Billy, the working class male, and his Julie, neither ever given a chance for a fulfilled life, so Oklahoma is a predatory pastoral.
A not atypical moment
The US early on developed a particularly predatory culture — sometime in the later part of the 18th century, reinforced by the lack of identification across immigrant groups, slavery and a lawless west where US guns reigned supreme and lynching became a commonplace way of “administering justice.” The cruelty of Southern culture in the early 19th century was matched (according to Harriet Martineau) by overt Northern killing of anyone opposed to slavery by those profiting from it. The modern Tea Party, some of the most powerful of southern writers (Faulkner, O’Connor) participate in this. An article in a recent issue of Women’s Review of Books where the US GI in France as opposed to all others, was the most violent, the male the most macho in his expectations of women and angry when he did not get what he thought he was entitled to (shades of our massacres), and then court-martialled black GIs as scapegoats — brought this out. It explains so much, from the centrality of slavery to US continual attacking other countries near it (almost immediately we invaded Canada), and the behavior of this state around the world today.
What do we have in Oklahoma: Jud, a male bully (the George Zimmerman of the piece, snarling, treacherous, a “skunk”) eager to violate Julie and kill Curly, and stopped only by murder by Curly (declared okay in a rigged swift hearing). The secondary couple presents sexism and stereotypes pastoralized so it is not as obvious as Carousel.
A long dance sequence with Jud at center and saloon girls around him
Quintessentially American musicals which the British unerringly (as a result of their culture) sufficiently distance so instead of the series of visceral skits strung together punctuated by high eruptions or intensely repudiative optimism (“When you walk through a storm …”), from raucous and poignant lyrical (Carousel) and to mindless joviality (Oklahoma), we are invited to enjoy them as nostalgic set pieces, e.g., all imagination as in this surrey with the fringe on top:
Ellen
Ellen And Jim Have A Blog, Two 
I find your post very interesting, Ellen, and I can’t completely disagree. I think Oklahoma is the most pastoral and desiring to be innocent of the Rodgers and Hammerstein shows, and the most akin to Carousel, but I also think R & H were very subversive in their shows. They are often accused of being innocent and childish in the story-lines, but I don’t think that was the case at all. Hammerstein, of course, previously had written the lyrics for Showboat – probably the first real musical with a social message – and even in Oklahoma and Carousel, there are subversive lines such as “seems like there’s time when a woman has no need for a man” but they are immediately brought back into comic rounds by the reply “but who wants to be dead.” Of course, they went on to write powerful shows dealing with racist issues such as South Pacific and to a lesser extent The King and I and The Flower Drum Song. Oklahoma was the launching board that made them a popular team and allowed them that leniency, and it was also written at the height of World War II where this romanticizing of Americana was a bit more understandable than in the musicals that preceded and followed it.
IN reply to both comments: I agree that Rogers and Hammerstein are mirroring and meaning to comment on American values; where we differ is I think they buy into these values even when they think they are rebelling against them. These are serious musicals in the sense that they are engaged. And I like the British production precisely because it’s understated, and thus deflects the bad aspects of Oklahoma. They did the same with Carousel in London.
“As much as I love Hugh Jackman, in my opinion, this has to be the worst production of Oklahoma I’ve seen. The costumes are drab, the set dark and depressing. It is not at all inspiring in the way the film was for me. There is nothing to love or make you want to belong to this land. I feel like I could live in the world of the film and be quite content, but I didn’t know this place and I suspect it’s because a British production can’t get at the heart of the American soul that inspired the play. Nevertheless, I’m glad at 70 years this wonderful play continues to be loved and revived.” Tyler again
As you may know, Ellen, BW is in the middle of 12 performances of Carousel. As a result I’ve seen the show (counting rehearsals) about a dozen times or more. I’ve come to see that, as you note, R&H actually do endorse traditional values–the Julie/Billy pair are the tragic ones, but the Snows (Carrie and Enoch) represent values such as restraint, respect for convention [sometimes the mean side of that is shown], and sex within marriage. Theirs is truly the happier story and they have as many or more numbers than Billy and Julie. Oklahoma is rougher in concept–Judd, well it’s hard to create a character we [the contemporary audience who have been “carefully taught” to be inclusive in our thinking] are supposed to hate, not feel sorry for–they messed up there, for me. Also, it’s painfully obvious that they never lived or likely even visited Oklahoma (the wind does not come after the rain; it comes before!!).
Thank you for the reply. Laura.
I’ve always loved Carousel for its overture. There was a time I’d play that 33 1/2 long playing record over and over to hear the overture. I identified with Billy and was not surprised to read somewhere or other President Clinton did as a boy. It’s unusual in its strong tragic feel but I like it all the more for that. The Snows are mean; they are those who would exclude Julie and despise Billy (not that Billy is admirable — he’s such another as Stanley in Streetcar Named Desire and there I’m certainly on the “side” of Blanche). I probably didn’t notice how very predatory subtextually Oklahoma is because only recently have I begun to see this as a strong aspect of US culture. Maybe their fullest and best is Showboat; there are also parts of _The King and I_ I’m fond of (as I am Anna and the King of Siam). If R&H had no knowledge of Oklahoma, the British might have no sense of what is the paradigmatic culture here; the unerringly is they did it intuitively. They substituted wild dancing as central to the art of the piece and that’s what I enjoyed most — plus a few of the songs.
I’m sure Bob is reveling in his part and you enjoying watching him.
Yes, it’s a lot of fun to watch. Actually not all the Snows are bad. Carrie was Julie’s best girlfriend, the sensible one who did not make the foolish choice to stay out all night with Billy and thus lose her job. Carrie, even after she marries Mr. Snow, is a friend to Julie (shares all the adventure of her trip to NYC when they are grown, etc. with Julie–they laugh together) and their little boy has a huge crush on Julie and Billie’s daughter and he even wants to marry her [but the daughter laughs that off and gets mad]. Before Carrie gets married they all (women) try to get her to lecture about why marriage is a bad idea (they have a funny hen session where they talk about this–and then they turn to Julie to “tell it like it is.” That’s when Julie sings the plaintive “What’s the use of wondering if he’s good or if he’s bad/…he’s your man, etc. [and you love him either way].” So Julie’s story demonstrates the foolishness of that view if we must have a moral to take away. 🙂
I love the two-piano version that R&H put together.The one we are playing.
Tyler wrote:
I’ll just add that to some degree we are supposed to feel sympathy for Jud. No one treats him very well – his former employers, Laurie, Curly are all mean to him. Aunt Eller is the only one who ever says anything kind about him and then only because he’s a hard worker. R&H wrote a song for him “Lonely Room” so we can better understand his viewpoint but
it was cut from the film version unfortunately.
Me: The London Oklahoma did present a hard view of Jud. They also cut the semi-comic, lugubrious but also oddly sympathetic “Poor Jud is Dead”; they saw him as a quintessential bully, a stupid rapist. I’ve read that like other of these R&H musicals, there will be songs that are written out of spontaneous exuberance over a character or from a character and then not fit into the story. In the Jerome Stern Showboat there’s Julie’s Bill.
For my part it made sense to me to present Jud in the light they did in the London production. I’m glad to see an uncompromising critique of male violence in US culture — if that’s what this is (after all maybe we’re breaking a butterfly on a wheel here). We don’t get half enough of it, far from that we get a continual defense of violence with impunity on the part of the police, no concern for the dead people they murder (or others, as recently a white man shot a black women looking for help from an accident on his porch; the same happened to a black athlete not so long ago).
Ellen