Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!

Curly is an Oklahoma cowhand in 1906. She loves her life, and even more she loves Aunt Eller’s young charge Laurey. But Laurey feels that Curly has waited too long to ask her to the town social, and agrees to go instead with the brooding farmhand Jud. Then there’s Will, who loves Ado Andy, but Andy loves . . . well, everybody. And in the Oklahoma Territory where they live, farmers and ranchers lock horns in a battle over water rights and fences. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s reflection on the American frontier, brimming with show-stopping songs and heartfelt storytelling, broke box-office records and changed the history of musical theatre when it premiered in 1943. Our production, is deeply respectful of the story it is telling, while breaking new ground with gender-inclusive casting and same-sex couples in a delightful celebration of love in its many forms. Suitable for all audiences.

Update 4/26/18: While Oklahoma! can be enjoyed by audience members of all ages, please be advised that the play contains some sexual innuendo, a discussion of suicide by hanging, and a few moments of violence.

Siempre es una bella mañana cuando Curly ve a Laurey, pero Laurey no está tan segura de Curly. Y Will ama a Ado Andy, pero Andy ama a… pues, a todos. Mientras tanto en el Territorio de Oklahoma de 1906 donde todos viven, los agricultores y los ganaderos se cruzan de cuernos en una batalla sobre las cercas y los derechos al agua. Cuando ¡Oklahoma! se estrenó en Broadway en 1943, rebosando de canciones estupendas y sinceras historias del corazón, esta obra revolucionó a la musical americana. La producción de Bill Rauch celebra el Aniversario 75 de la obra abriendo nuevo terreno. Con parejas principales del mismo sexo y otros miembros LBGTQ2+ del elenco, esta producción afirma el espectro de identidad en una encantadora y perspicaz celebración del amor en sus múltiples formas.

Curly es una vaquera de Oklahoma en 1906. Ella ama su vida, y ama aún más Laurey, la joven encargada a su tía Eller. Pero Laurey cree que Curly se ha demorado demasiado en invitarle a la convivencia del pueblo, entonces acepta acompañar al melancólico granjero Jud. Y luego tenemos a Will que ama a Ado Andy, pero Andy ama a…. pues, a todos.  Y en el Territorio de Oklahoma de 1906 donde viven, los agricultores y los ganaderos se cruzan de cuernos en una batalla sobre las cercas y los derechos al agua. La reflexión de Rodgers y Hammerstein sobre la frontera americana, llena de canciones espectaculares  y sinceras historias del corazón, rompió todos los récords y cambió la historia del teatro musical cuando se estrenó en 1943. Esta producción respeta profundamente a la historia que cuenta, mientras abre nuevo terreno con un elenco género-inclusivo y parejas del mismo sexo en una encantadora celebración del amor en sus múltiples formas. Es una obra idónea para todas las edades.

El Teatro Angus Bowmer cuenta con elevador que lleva a los patrones de teatro a la Fila E o la Fila K.

El Oregon Shakespeare Festival se compromete a la accesibilidad. Reconocemos a las necesidades de los patrones con discapacidades y nos esforzamos a asegurar que nuestras instalaciones y producciones les sean accesibles a todos. OSF ofrece una variedad de acomodaciones, aquí descritas here.

Much of the dialogue in Oklahoma! comes directly from Lynn Riggs’s 1931 play Green Grow the Lilacs, which he wrote in France on a Guggenheim Fellowship. Riggs’s own voice was courtly and formal, but when he recalled the characters he heard in his Oklahoma youth, he heard them speaking in a particular dialect that he sought to represent.

“Their speech is lazy, drawling, not Southern, not ‘hick,’ ” Riggs notes in a stage direction, “but rich, half-conscious of its rhythms, its picturesque imagery.”

This imagery could be comic, as when Laurey teases Curly that she “heared someone a-singin’ like a bull-frog in a pond,” or barbed, when Curly goads Jud that “You c’n have muscles, oh, like arn—and still be as weak as a empty bladder—less’n you got things to barb your hide with,” or simply homespun, as when Aunt Eller warns Ado Annie that “time you’re old as me, you’ll be settin’ around, just the way I am, ’th a wooden leg and a bald head, and a-rippin’ up old floursacks to make yerself a pair of drawers out of.” Riggs’s cadences find the music in these laments; his goal, he wrote, was “to give voice and a dignified existence to people who found themselves, most pitiably, without a voice.”

When Oscar Hammerstein set out to write lyrics for Oklahoma! that, he said, would seem “to be, as much as possible, a continuation of dialogue,” he had to find that picturesque idiom as well. “Deriving from a source that is real, the whole production is lifted a plane above literal reality,” he wrote in a 1943 New York Times article about his composition process. A line like “All the cattle are standin’ like statues” from “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’ ” is quite literally picturesque; it turns the landscape into a figurative artwork for the speaker’s contemplation. And yet it stays within the register of a sharp cowhand who sees that “a little brown mav’rick is winkin’ her eye.”

From statues to winkin’, from art to flirtation, the language retains that “rich, half-conscious” awareness of a distinctly American folk poetry.

—Daniel Pollack-Pelzner

Reprinted from OSF’s 2018 Illuminations, a 64-page guide to the season’s plays. Members at the Donor level and above and teachers who bring school groups to OSF receive a free copy of Illuminations.