you're doing fine, oklahoma

Oklahoma! was the musical my freshman year of high school; I only remember bits and pieces of it now that it was — and I can’t believe I’m typing this — something like 20 years ago. I played in the pit orchestra for it, so most of my memories of the production itself are centered around faking it ‘til I made it in the dream ballet sequence; learning how to play and breathe through the dry ice-fog rolling off the stage and into the pit; the struggle of your average teenage boy playing the part of Curly to hit the notes required of him.

But it stuck with me, cheesy songs and garishly-colored costumes and all, and still to this day is a show where, if I’m at a thrift shop or secondhand store or used book/anything media sale and happen to see a record for sale of any old production, I usually snap it up.

You never forget your first theater production, I guess, even if you never actually got to be a theater kid.

[Content Notes: The rest of this post contains spoilers for Oklahoma, both the general plot of the 75+ year old show, and specifics of aspects that were changed for the revival currently on Broadway/allegedly soon to be touring. There is also discussion of gun violence, suicide/inciting someone to commit suicide, and murder.]

Oklahoma! has always been a saucy production — the innuendo has always been present in the songs (though sometimes modified for film or, you know, high school productions). And while a big chunk of the internet was like “this Oklahoma fucks” (legit, there’s a hashtag for it and some of the cast uses it and everything) when the revival first hit the mainstream, the truth is that this show has always been about women discovering their sexuality in a world that doesn’t necessarily care about their needs or desires.

It just took this version, with this cast, and this specific vision, to turn something that I always looked on fondly — even while I acknowledged that it was irredeemably cheesy — into something actually new and different and, yeah, incredibly horny.

(If you didn’t know something was afoot, you would figure it out the second “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top” turns into a fun, sexy flirtation instead of something wildly saccharine.)

*

“Oh, so Jud’s basically an incel,” I thought to myself the first time I saw the show.

Patrick Vaill’s performance of Jud is more nuanced than that, of course, and this production was shaped and workshopped years before that whole concept hit the public discourse. But we still have a man who thinks he’s owed something, who thinks he’s owed Laurey, and when she finally says no, when he can’t have her, everything unravels.

A lot of (cis, male) reviewers call Jud more sympathetic in this version, and that might be true in some ways — Vaill plays Jud with a tremble, with an awkwardness to him. He’s not the meathead played for laughs like in other productions, not a sweaty guy in a tank top, drunk all the time. He’s quiet, kind of mousey, sloppy. His clothes are ripped and ill-fitting. His eyes dart side to side, always scanning his surroundings. His mouth moves, but no sound comes out. Even in scenes where he’s just in the background, he looks like he’s alternating between wanting to crawl out of his skin and wanting to shrivel up and disappear. He looks like he’s stuck in a world that he doesn’t fit into, and he doesn’t really know how to change that.

But he’s also far more terrifying in this revival. I never remember finding any other version of Jud even a little bit intimidating, even if the role is traditionally cast with a big guy, someone who looks like he spends all day working on a farm, and all night getting drunk.

Those guys don’t scare me. Never have. Guys like this Jud — they do.

Here, Jud is every man who’s ever called a woman on the spot after she gives him her number. Every man who pesters you on the subway when you’ve got your headphones in. Every man who goes onto 4chan or Reddit or whatever and bemoans the fact that he can’t get a girlfriend, ergo all women are bad and need to be taught a lesson.

Jud would probably say he’s a nice guy.

*

How huge is it to, in the year 2020, have a young black woman saying, “But I'm afraid to tell Jud I won't go, he’d do something terrible.” To know that he’s watching her in a way that is unwanted. And then to have her fears still be dismissed, waved off as her just being a “crazy young’un” who doesn’t know her own mind, doesn’t know her own reality. And to have the entire rest of the plot of the show hinge on that moment.

I don’t think any of this hit me back when I played this show when I was, what, 14? 15? High school versions of the show get rid of some of the bawdy humor, but Laurey’s fears about Jud are the same. Every version, every time.

Now, though, the audience believes her.

It’s 2020 and we’re still talking about the same shit we were in 1942.

*

You’re supposed to root for Curly in Oklahoma. And Damon Daunno makes it hard to do anything but, what with his, you know, whole face and everything.

But Curly’s also an asshole, and a little harder to root for here. (Once you get past, you know, the face.) (And doesn’t that say everything, about how willing one is to overlook bad, reckless behavior, just because someone’s pretty?)

Daunno plays Curly’s wild swings in mood and motivation perfectly. If Laurey wants to consider a suitor, does she really want one quite so irritating and immature and impulsive as Curly? It’s easy to see why Laurey would hesitate to accept his advances.

Yes, even with that face.

This Curly feels dangerous, too, albeit in a different way from Jud. Where Jud is full of the righteous anger of a man who thinks he’s owed something, Curly’s full of unearned confidence. The bravado, the swagger. He’s the captain of the football team who expects to date the captain of the cheerleading squad — because why wouldn’t she want to date him? The idea of Laurey not being interested in him seems to flummox him — if she’s not going to the box social with him, then who’s she going with? And why? And why isn’t it him? He deserves it, doesn’t he?

The hint of fragility that Daunno infuses into his portrayal of Curly is what really elevates this role from any other Curly that I’ve seen. Sure, half of the time he’s the cocky cowboy, guitar slung over his shoulder, doing the absolute most to get Laurey to finally agree to go with him. But the moments where that facade cracks is where Curly’s his most human. (His delivery of “Laurey, please, ma'am, marry me. I don't know what I’m gonna do if you don't.” gets me every single time.)

*

Which brings us to “Pore Jud Is Daid”. I’ve never seen a version of the show which doesn’t play that song, and the preceding conversation — where Curly literally tries to convince Jud to kill himself — isn’t played for laughs.

See:

• this 2011 performance from the University of North Carolina, which uses all of the original 1943 designs, orchestrations, and choreography;

• this version from the 1955 film;

• this version from the 2017 BBC Proms;

• or this version, from the 1999 performance with Hugh Jackman.

Even without a laugh track or a live audience, the very blocking of the scene tells you it’s supposed to be funny. You chuckle as Curly reacts to Jud joining in on the song. You laugh as our hero, the suave cowboy, gets the presumably dumb hired hand to fantasize about his own funeral.

It is the most diabolical scene in the musical, and yet for 70-some years, it’s been presented in a way that draws chuckles.

Not so, here.

Jud and Curly stare each other down from across the stage, Curly’s guitar perched on his lap, pointed straight at Jud. Like a weapon, if you’re into symbolism.

“Well, open it, can’t you?” Jud says, and then the house lights, which stay up nearly the entire performance, are cut. All you’ve got are the glowing of exit signs in the theater, and the hushed voices of the actors creaking in the stillness.

And in the silent stillness of the theater, Curly says “that’s a good-looking rope you’ve got there,” and the humor of the scene is gone.

It’s not funny. It’s not. It’s a side of Curly we’ve been seeing since 1943 and ignoring — it’s dark and dangerous and his echoed “good” to Jud’s line of “and now they know their friend has gone for good” is full of every ounce of cruelty you expect from the cool kid who bullies the weird kids.

Instead of chuckles at their conversation, there is nothing but tension. You could hear a pin drop as Jud contemplates Curly’s suggestion. As the dialogue gives way to song, Patrick Vaill’s face is projected onto the back wall of the theater and we see his eyes well with tears as Curly talks about Jud’s imaginary funeral, the women weeping and wailing. The camera pulls back in the final stanza, getting Curly in the frame, their faces dangerously close as they sing at each other. As the actors stare each other down, lips nearly touching, the show suddenly has an electric undercurrent that wasn’t present 70+ years ago.

(One of the audiences I was in did actually laugh through this scene, in all the same places you would at a standard production, and I am burning with curiosity at what made one audience collectively read the scene far differently than it’s played.)

*

Overheard in the lobby after one showing, said jokingly: “You mean the 1942 version wasn’t about toxic masculinity, too?”

*

The thing about theater in the round is that sometimes you miss stuff. Maybe you’re not seated at the right angle for the way a scene is blocked. An actor’s back is to you. An actor is sitting directly in front of you. The action’s happening just out of your field of vision. Whatever the reason, you miss things. Someone sitting across from you could walk away feeling as though they saw a completely different show from you. I fully believe that you could see this show 10 different times and sit in 10 different seats and each time you’d discover something new. Sometimes it’s something silly — the many brilliant facial expressions of Will Brill (Ali Hakim) and James Davis (Will Parker), directed not at the cast but at the audience, for example — and sometimes it’s more important.

Sometimes, it changes what it is you think you’re seeing.

The final scene, when Jud returns and eventually is killed, is the most startling change — and the most significant — from the original text, where Jud’s death is maybe an accident (the versions where they fight and he falls onto his own knife) or maybe not (the version where they fight and Curly pushes him off a haystack).

Here, though, what happens is unmistakable: Curly shoots Jud, with only the barest of provocations. Jud takes not even a half step towards Curly and Laurey.

But depending on where you watch it from, this was what Jud wanted all along. There’s a conversation that goes on between the two of them as Jud places the gun in Curly’s hand. It’s a conversation held in the pleading in Jud’s eyes, the wordless movements of his mouth. The way he plants himself before Curly and waits. The tilt of Curly’s head. Maybe the tiniest of nods. Two men, coming to an understanding.

Jud knows what’s coming.

That doesn’t justify Curly pulling the trigger, of course. Jud’s death here reads as an early 1900s version of suicide-by-cop, only Curly’s not even a cop. He’s just a guy. Curly could just walk away. He doesn’t, and now he’s got to live with that, he and Laurey both. Making the death unambiguously not an accident — but instead a shooting in a very flimsy case of “self-defense” — changes the entire tone of the final scene. You have the feeling as you watch the hasty “court” proceedings that there is no justice here, that Curly’s getting away with something huge.

There’s no next scene to know what that aftermath is going to look like. There’s just a blood-spattered, stunned bride and groom, surrounded by the rest of the town who just propelled them to freedom.

And you. The audience, with your breath caught in your lungs, afraid to exhale. You saw this happen. You saw everything that led to this. You watched the shooting, the joke of a trial. You were there.

*

I can’t pick just one favorite moment from this show, but there’s one that’s stuck with me, and it comes in the final moments of the second act.

After the “trial”, the cast joins together to reprise the title song. In the movie/other stage productions, this is a joyous occasion, as Curly and Laurey are taken to town to catch a train for their honeymoon. Never mind the fact that a man just died. Never mind that.

Here, well. The rest of the cast tries to make it joyous. But keep your eyes on Curly and Laurey. Rebecca Naomi Jones — who is exquisite throughout the entire show as a bolder, savvier Laurey than we’ve ever seen before — plays this scene to perfection, her lips barely moving along with the song. She watches Curly, she looks at her hands, her dress, covered in blood. She does not celebrate. There is no joy.

And Curly. Blood sliding down his face, hammering on his guitar. In the first go-round of the song, he lets out a joyous yelp in the final verse. In the reprise? Bent double, an anguished scream. There is no joy.

At the final “Oklahoma, okay!” the cast pump their fists in the air in unison.

Laurey barely moves, still shell-shocked. Curly gives the weakest of fist-pumps.

There is no joy.

*

I have so many words to share about this show. I could keep writing about it. I didn’t even touch on the brilliance of Ali Stroker as Ado Annie — anyone who said her Tony was a sympathy award needs to shut their face — or elevating the Ali Hakim character out of “white dude in brownface with a bad fake accent” or Mary freaking Testa breathing new life into Aunt Eller. I spent like half a sentence on the intentional homoerotic tilt to Jud and Curly’s confrontation when that deserves a whole essay of its own.

I’ll probably write more about this show. I can’t get it out of my head.

The revival closes on Broadway on January 19. If you are at all near NYC, if you can get yourself there, I can’t possibly give a stronger recommendation than to go, go now, do not wait. A national tour is supposed to kick off later this year, as well. And while the show will inherently be different with a different cast, I implore you to go if it comes anywhere near you. If you don’t want to go alone, I will come to your city and go with you. Do it for me. Do it for horny Oklahoma.