Oklahoma! - Young Vic / Wyndham’s

I’m so ambivalent about Rodgers and Hammerstein. Never sure whether (for Musical Theatre at that time) their touches of social commentary were brave and daring; or whether they took tough material from other sources and softened it down, keeping only enough grit to gain kudos, while probing the issues just puddle deep.


I always thought Lyn Riggs was a female writer (my bad), but he was a part Cherokee gay man who had written plays on Cherokee life before  ‘Green Grow The Lilacs’ that ‘Oklahoma!’ adapted. The original play had much more clarity about the conflict over best use of the land - arable or pastoral - between ‘The Farmer and the Cowman’. Crucially too, the fact that both parties were battling over land that was Cherokee homeland was in the play. “Indian Territory” is how the scene is described by Riggs. If the Farmers and the Cowman ultimately hoedown their way to a cosy handshake, it’s at the expense of the ‘Indian’ people.


Riggs’ outsider was Jeeter Fry - changed to Jud Fry by Hammerstein - though Riggs didn’t write Jeeter as Cherokee. You’d think he would in order to show the expulsion of the Cherokee nation, but in his play the mainstream characters associate more with ‘Indian blood’ than the Federal United States. Riggs' Aunt Eller says of the USA, “you’d think us people out here lived in the United States! It’s jist a furrin country to me”. Neighbours respond: “Why I’m jist plumb full of Indian blood myself.” “Me, too! And I c’n prove it!”

In Rodgers and Hammerstein’s hands, it’s all normalised to a USA-lovin’ tale of American absorption and expansion, 

I found the revival a mix of ‘too much’ and ‘not enough’.

‘Not Enough’ - It’s very late (the final song) for us to realise that drawing up values for a “brand new state, aint that great” is what this is about. Is there anything more than that one line from a song? Certainly not enough for an audience to notice without research or a heavily-guiding programme note. The set suggests a community meeting hall where values of that new state might be thrashed out, but never names it. I’d have welcomed some added dialogue as a prologue, or simply leaflets handed out as part of the interactivity, showing voting options for ‘how we’re going to live’. Why go for the community hall if you’re not going to really exploit it? At the end, the locals get their first chance at administering justice, so that does work, but needs context in the build up for it to land with gravity.

‘Too much’ - the way everything was sexualised to the point of absurdity. Yet it does have the benefit of making Jud look no more sex-obsessed/perverted than the rest (less perhaps, at least he does his in private).
‘Too Much’ - does Rodgers and Hammerstein’s work deserve to be radicalised when it still falls short of reflecting the Indian experience of Lynn Riggs? It flatters Rodgers and Hammerstein into appearing the radicals they weren’t. Or…were they?