

‘Oklahoma!’ review
I’m struggling to think of a hornier theatre production than Daniel Fish’s radical revamp of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s 1943 musical ‘Oklahoma!’. A big pre-pandemic hit in New York – where it was dubbed ‘sexy Oklahoma!’ – the first half in particular of Fish’s deceptively barebones production leans really creatively into the fact that very little happens in ‘Oklahoma!’ beyond its characters thirsting after each other, and thirsting hard. Rather than any sort of recreation of the town of Claremore and its surrounds, Laura Jellinek and Grace Laubacher’s design sets everything in a sort of barebones wooden dancehall with the audience set up traverse on two sides, the band sprawled out across one, the house lights dazzlingly bright, and tables groaning with anachronistic tinnies of Bud Light. It’s discombobulating: perhaps we’re in 1906 (when ‘Oklahoma!’ is set); perhaps we’re in a sort of spiritual limbo common to all boring rural towns. The musical’s signature song ‘Oh, What A Beautiful Mornin’ feels ironic in this no place, and its lyrics are often refrained and twisted into weird, bitter patterns. What fills the void is lust. There is no coyness in the show’s two central love triangles: Anouska Lucas’s farmgirl Laurey Williams vacillates between looking impassively cool and like a desperate horndog as she’s wooed by Arthur Darvill’s cocksure cowboy Curley and Patrick Vaill’s brooding farmhand Jud. At one point Laurey is clearly ready to pounce upon her exuberant friend Ado Anni