Stratford Ropes in the American Wild West – A Review of Oklahoma!
(Published in the September 2007 issue of The Strand)
By Ramya Jegatheesan
Even past the first appraising glance Oklahoma! appears to be made to order American cheese. The story plays out on the wide open frontier where cowboys and farmers are duking it out all friendly like and Oklahoma’s only just around the corner from taking on the mantle of American statehood.
But oh does the story get better! Oklahoma! exults in two love triangles – the tragic and the comic. The tragic gives us the following recipe: boy loves girl, girl harbors deep waves of passion for boy, but plays coy and accompanies the brooding, lonely hired hand Jud, who yearns Pinocchio-like for a real woman (he’s just so tired of looking at naughty pictures of naked women in the privacy of his hovel), to the box social.
Not to worry, our tormented villain does eventually meet his ‘karmic end’, and our charming cowboy still gets his sunny though regretfully bloody nuptials. The comic love triangle is just as delightfully cheesy. Here you have the boy with the roving eyes but the heart of gold, the sweetly naïve girl who just caint say no, and a Persian peddler who grabs at women just as often as he hawks his wares. It’s Rodgers and Hammerstein’s age old Pulitzer Prize winning recipe for American musical success, all 64 years of it. However, on this side of the border, in Shakespearean Stratford, the cheese appears to have gone a bit stale though still packing a wholesome punch.
Stratford’s production leaps with energy from the fleet footed dancing to the soaring singing and eager beaver performances. McLellan as Aunt Eller has comedic timing you couldn’t fault, Blair as Will Parker was charismatic and likeable, and Ellul’s Ali Hakim had the crowd roaring. Wilson and Chameroy were effective as Laurey and Curly respectively, but Thomas’s Ado Annie was a little overwrought. It was David Keeley as Jud Fry, however, who out of all the cast managed to find the humanity in his character, casting aside the clichéd veneer of the villain to show us glimpses of the tormented and lonely man underneath. Indeed, Keeley was so effective at making us feel for poor ole Jud Fry that when he finally dies, there was no feeling of satisfaction at the death of the storied villain, only a hint of regret and pity that it had to be this way. While all the performances were strong, the cast, with the exception of Keeley, was not able to infuse their characters with the complexity and insight needed to make the audience care and connect with them. They remained cardboard characters imported from the Ghost of Broadway Past.
The set design, on the other hand, was prettily imaginative with its rustic country home and stained glass clouds that shifted colours to reflect the passage of time, and managed to evoke the open spaces of the countryside even within the small confines of the Festival Theatre stage, which Donna Feore so deftly handled with her nimble choreography. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! peddles high grade cheese for its bread and butter, and while the Stratford imported variety is not as fresh as could be hoped for, it still has you leaving the theatre humming its captivating tunes.
(Published in the September 2007 issue of The Strand)
By Ramya Jegatheesan
Even past the first appraising glance Oklahoma! appears to be made to order American cheese. The story plays out on the wide open frontier where cowboys and farmers are duking it out all friendly like and Oklahoma’s only just around the corner from taking on the mantle of American statehood.
But oh does the story get better! Oklahoma! exults in two love triangles – the tragic and the comic. The tragic gives us the following recipe: boy loves girl, girl harbors deep waves of passion for boy, but plays coy and accompanies the brooding, lonely hired hand Jud, who yearns Pinocchio-like for a real woman (he’s just so tired of looking at naughty pictures of naked women in the privacy of his hovel), to the box social.
Not to worry, our tormented villain does eventually meet his ‘karmic end’, and our charming cowboy still gets his sunny though regretfully bloody nuptials. The comic love triangle is just as delightfully cheesy. Here you have the boy with the roving eyes but the heart of gold, the sweetly naïve girl who just caint say no, and a Persian peddler who grabs at women just as often as he hawks his wares. It’s Rodgers and Hammerstein’s age old Pulitzer Prize winning recipe for American musical success, all 64 years of it. However, on this side of the border, in Shakespearean Stratford, the cheese appears to have gone a bit stale though still packing a wholesome punch.
Stratford’s production leaps with energy from the fleet footed dancing to the soaring singing and eager beaver performances. McLellan as Aunt Eller has comedic timing you couldn’t fault, Blair as Will Parker was charismatic and likeable, and Ellul’s Ali Hakim had the crowd roaring. Wilson and Chameroy were effective as Laurey and Curly respectively, but Thomas’s Ado Annie was a little overwrought. It was David Keeley as Jud Fry, however, who out of all the cast managed to find the humanity in his character, casting aside the clichéd veneer of the villain to show us glimpses of the tormented and lonely man underneath. Indeed, Keeley was so effective at making us feel for poor ole Jud Fry that when he finally dies, there was no feeling of satisfaction at the death of the storied villain, only a hint of regret and pity that it had to be this way. While all the performances were strong, the cast, with the exception of Keeley, was not able to infuse their characters with the complexity and insight needed to make the audience care and connect with them. They remained cardboard characters imported from the Ghost of Broadway Past.
The set design, on the other hand, was prettily imaginative with its rustic country home and stained glass clouds that shifted colours to reflect the passage of time, and managed to evoke the open spaces of the countryside even within the small confines of the Festival Theatre stage, which Donna Feore so deftly handled with her nimble choreography. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! peddles high grade cheese for its bread and butter, and while the Stratford imported variety is not as fresh as could be hoped for, it still has you leaving the theatre humming its captivating tunes.
