“Plenty of Heart, Plenty of Hope: The Making of Oklahoma! and the Broadway Musical,” Presented by Muse/ique at The Wallis, Beverly Hills, July 26-28, 2024
Aug. 19, 2024 | By Bruce R. Feldman
In Brief: A pleasurable if lean collection of mostly familiar showtunes performed attractively. Less satisfying were dutiful commentaries between songs that defended the thesis that Oklahoma! presaged nearly everything that has happened on Broadway over the last eight decades.
The original 1943 production of "Oklahoma!" broke convention but still delivered plenty of the pizzazz that audiences wanted from musicals.
It’s a cliché to say that Oklahoma! indelibly changed the American musical theater. In a way, it certainly did, but that’s a simplistic understanding of the arc of the Broadway musical from 1943 to now.
Richard Rodgers, the composer, and Oscar Hammerstein II, who wrote both the lyrics and the mostly tender, sometimes cheeky libretto, bucked convention in a few significant ways. They sacrificed a splashy opening number in favor of a lone cowboy walking on the stage to sing the wistful ballad "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’."
They introduced the brooding psychopath Jud Fry into an otherwise sunny story of romance on the range circa 1906. They engaged Agnes DeMille to fashion striking, complex dream ballets, revolutionary for the time, that expressed the anxieties and fears of the main characters.
Rodgers and Hammerstein did something else to ensure that Oklahoma! would be a smash hit. They produced one of the all-time great Broadway musical scores. And they assembled a cast of fresh talents, led by Alfred Drake – who would go on to be one of Broadway’s biggest headliners in Kiss, Me Kate and then Kismet – to sell it.
Agnes De Mille's remarkable dream ballets for "Oklahoma!" explored the inner fears of the leading characters
The songs the duo wrote are among the most beautiful, memorable, and enduring ever to have come from any Broadway show before or since. "People Will Say We’re in Love," "The Surrey with the Fringe on Top," and "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'" are still oft-covered pop and jazz standards.
The team also produced joyful, animated novelty numbers: "Kansas City," "I Cain’t Say No," and "The Farmer and the Cowman." And while their opening song may have been more reflective than rousing, their finale, "Oklahoma," was just the opposite, with the full company yipping and belting out Rodgers and Hammerstein’s defiant anthem. The arrival on stage of the just married Laurie and Curly in the surrey with the “yeller” wheels and the fringe on top was the icing on the cake.
This sensational, upbeat, romantic ending thrilled audiences as they left the theater. Critics may have focused on the finer plot points or the psychological make-up of the characters. What audiences took away were the incredible songs, the corny comedy and quirky characters, and the love story that ends on a high note.
The show worked spectacularly not because of its groundbreaking aspects, but despite them. The production ran a record 2,212 performances and spawned multiple national tours, major foreign productions, numerous Broadway revivals, a colorful wide-screen movie, and to this day myriad community theater, college, and high school productions.
Vivienne Segal and Gene Kelly in Rodgers and Hart's "Pal Joey"
Oklahoma! didn’t exactly come from nowhere. Some key antecedents influenced the talents behind it. Showboat, from 1927, was a sobering story about racial prejudice and tragic love. It featured a lush Jerome Kern score packed with hit songs like "Can’t Help Loving’ Dat Man," "Make Believe," and "Ol’ Man River."
Pal Joey, from 1940, also was an example of a successful Broadway show that departed from the light musical comedies of the day. It was a cynical tale based on stories John O’Hara published in The New Yorker. Its main character – played by Gene Kelly – was a charming good for nothing who ran a struggling nightclub and manipulated others to move up in society. "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered" and "I Could Write a Book" were two of the show’s most treasured numbers.
Rodgers and Hammerstein knew both of these musicals well. Hammerstein had written the lyrics and trailblazing book for Showboat. Rodgers had composed the tuneful score for Pal Joey.
There was another production that very likely had an impact on the Rodgers and Hammerstein. That was Lady in the Dark, which opened on Broadway in 1941, with music by Kurt Weill, urbane lyrics by Ira Gershwin, and an imaginative book by Moss Hart. The conflicted protagonist, a fashion magazine editor named Liza Elliot, is undergoing psychotherapy. She recounts her dreams in extended fantasy musical sequences with lavish costumes, choreography, and, in her circus dream, acrobatics. The show starred Gertrude Lawrence and Danny Kaye and featured the haunting ballad "My Ship" and the clever comedy number "The Saga of Jenny." It ran for a year and a half.
"Lady in the Dark" featured lavish dream sequences. It opened in 1941 and was made into a movie in 1944 starring Ginger Rogers, shown here.
You wouldn’t know about any of this from Muse/ique’s introduction to Oklahoma! Instead, musical director Rachael Worby and journalist Todd Purdum chose only to look forward by trying to connect the dots between 1943’s Oklahoma! And 1968’s Hair with a stop at 1957’s West Side Story.
It’s easy to see the parallels between Oklahoma! and that other landmark musical, West Side Story. Composer Leonard Bernstein and choreographer Jerome Robbins were contemporaries of Hammerstein. And lyricist Steven Sondheim, though quite a few years younger, had been mentored since his formative years by Hammerstein, who regarded him as a protégé and a son. You could say that Sondheim was carefully taught to spot social injustice and personal uncertainties and then to do something about them.
It's not clear how this gets us from Oklahoma! to Hair and The Wiz, but the Muse/ique concert closed with songs from both. Other musicals might have been more understandable successors. Gypsy, a harsh tale about a domineering stage mother, or Cabaret, set against the horrors of Nazi Germany, or Sondheim’s Company, a contrarian view of married life, or Rodgers and Hammerstein’s own South Pacific come to mind.
While the scholarship may have been misguided, the singing by Brandon Victor Dixon and Abi Levis was gorgeous. A jazz cover of "Surrey with the Fringe on Top" was terrific, serving also as a reminder of the timeless nature of much of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s work.
It’s a shame that the evening was over in under 90 minutes. Certainly, such impeccable artistry, an appreciative audience, and 80 years of American musical theatre all deserved better than that.
“Plenty of Heart, Plenty of Hope: The Making of Oklahoma! and the Broadway Musical,”The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills, (310) 746-4000, www.thewallis.org
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