THE HANGOVER REPORT – Daniel Fish radically re-envisions an OKLAHOMA! stripped of artifice, and it’s bloody brilliant

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Damon Daunno in Daniel Fish’s production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!” at St. Ann’s Warehouse.

Tonight at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, I caught Daniel Fish’s radical Off-Broadway reinterpretation (deconstruction?) of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s seminal musical Oklahoma! Long story short, it’s a stunner. What Mr. Fish does isn’t so much tastefully reexamine the classic musical (e.g., the “Bartlett Sher” treatment) as much as jam it squarely into the 21st-Century by stripping the musical of its familiar, well-worn artifice. Not even the score is exempt from this wholesale, bottoms-up revisal. Indeed, Daniel Kluger’s caressing but arresting folk orchestrations and the stylish, soulful vocal stylings of the cast made me listen to the indestructible score – particularly Hammerstein’s wise, rock solidly crafted lyrics – with fresh ears.  As you can imagine, the result is a jarring experience, but I’m happy to report that the production at St. Ann’s Warehouse is a bloody artistic triumph; it had me completely engaged and on the edge of my seat for much of its nearly three hour running time.

As for the cast, they make the risky choice of approaching the material from a contemporary, irony-free perspective, likely defying the creators’ original intentions, yet still somehow managing to work within and even uncannily expanding the thematic parameters of the unaltered text. The handsome Damon Daunno plays Curly as a shallow, churlish pretty boy with a soaring Thom York yelp, and not the dashing hero (complete with a Broadway legit voice) who invariably saves the day. With Laurie, musical theater favorite Rebecca Naomi Jones may have very well finally found one of her signature roles. She’s mesmerizing in all respects, imbuing the character with a defeated quality, and yearning, achingly raw vocals to match. Her Laurie seems to walk shell-shocked through much of the musical. And why shouldn’t she? Consider her situation – she’s a smart, strong-willed girl at the whim of two men who probably aren’t worthy of her. The rest of the cast, particularly the steel-voiced Mary Testa’s Aunt Eller and the undaunted, commanding Ali Stroker’s Ado Annie, play their roles with a frank intensity that’s unnerving (a compliment).

But the main attraction here is Mr. Fish’s revolutionary, existential staging, first seen at Bard SummerScape, which boldly reclaims Oklahoma! for today’s audiences. And luckily, he got to it before Ivo van Hove could get his hands on the material (but van Hove fans fear not; the red hot Belgian auteur theater director’s rendition of the equally iconic musical West Side Story is due to arrive on Broadway next season). At times, Mr. Fish deliberately slows down the musical’s typically buoyant pacing, sometimes down to a slow crawl, as if taunting us to get a whiff of the violent, morally questionable, and dire circumstances of life in early America (talented up-and-coming opera composer Missy Mazzoli recently explored the same themes in her haunting opera Proving Up). Stripped of musical theater’s sometimes synthetically upbeat veneer, it’s fascinating if unsettling to discover that Rodgers and Hammerstein’s work can support such ambivalence. When the company exclaims the musical’s famous title song with questioning befuddlement and earthshaking rage instead of the usual irrepressible and patriotic optimism, I couldn’t help but feel that Mr. Fish was both shattering the benign mythologies underlying our country (and Oklahoma! itself), as well as holding a mirror to our own times. Oh, and don’t get me started with his take on the repositioned and repurposed requisite dream ballet …

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

 

OKLAHOMA!
Off-Broadway, Musical
St. Ann’s Warehouse
2 hours, 50 minutes (with one intermission)
Through November 11

Categories: Off-Broadway, Theater

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