Matt Wolf The Nando Times 3 August 1998

Oklahoma! is the famous Rodgers and Hammerstein musical whose opening song celebrates a "beautiful mornin"' turning into a "beautiful day." Now, a dreary London summer is being made beautiful by an English revival of the 1943 American classic at the Royal National Theatre.

The state-funded National in 1992 reclaimed a subsequent Rodgers and Hammerstein treasure, Carousel and sent it winging around the world in a staging that found unexpected depths of emotion in a show about clambakes, domestic violence and death. But can Oklahoma! match the clout of Carousel inasmuch as its synopsis makes it look to be about nothing more or less earth-shattering than who -- Curly or Jud -- will take Laurey to the box social?

The answer is yes, and audiences have until Oct. 3 to find out for themselves. Tickets are selling fast, with the National breaking the box-office records previously set by Alan Bennett's play The Madness of George III and the revival of another Broadway classic Guys and Dolls. Later in the fall, the 1,125-seat Olivier auditorium must give itself over to a new staging of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra even as this Oklahoma! is readied for a longer commercial life in London and abroad

Its success marks a particular coup for Trevor Nunn, who last October took over as artistic director of the National, one of the most important playhouses in the English-speaking theater. Earlier in his career, Nunn had spent 18 years running the Royal Shakespeare Company. He had directed only one American musical (The Baker's Wife, a well-reviewed West End flop), making his name -- and fortune -- staging such British musical behemoths as Cats, Starlight Express, Les Miserables and Sunset Boulevard.

Nunn knows as well as anyone that there will be detractors who scoff at lavishing taxpayers' money on a genre thought by some to be essentially frivolous. But he has always believed that musicals represent a "tried and tested art form," he said in an interview during Oklahoma! rehearsals. Speaking from the perspective of having directed countless classic plays and opera as well, Nunn, 58, resists the notion that "we should do musicals but only esoteric ones, only difficult ones that require a degree in music to appreciate." That argument, he feels, "is not worth having."

The proof in any case is in the production, a point echoed by Susan Stroman, the American choreographer of this revival who has twice won Broadway's Tony Award. "There's something about working at the National Theatre that is very nurturing to the artist," Stroman said. "It's all about the process, about the art surrounding and creating a play or musical. Although I am doing an old warhorse, it's being treated as a new piece."

That's certainly true in Stroman's case. With the exception of an English touring production several years back that never came to London, this is the first major Oklahoma! to dispense with the groundbreaking choreography of the late and legendary Agnes de Mille, which includes the dream ballet at the end of the first act. Where most stagings give the so-called "Dream Sequence" over to an alternate Curly and Laurey, Stroman retains the show's principals for the ballet. "Having the three leads really grounds the ballet into the show," she said.

Both Nunn and Stroman were keen to forego anything folksy about the material -- vistas of polka dot dresses and daisies included -- in favor of a more truthful, less patronizing approach. For Nunn, that meant going back to the play on which Hammerstein's libretto is based: Lynn Riggs' Green Grow the Lilacs. In rehearsals, he says, "I had the opportunity the first week to treat it as a play and only as a play."

The cast offers as diverse a mix of talent as the offstage team. Aunt Eller, the show's feisty representative of common sense mixed with compassion, is played by Maureen Lipman, a popular English comedian.

Laurey is played by a dancer, Josefina Gabrielle, while Curly is the strong-voiced Australian, Hugh Jackman, in his English theater debut.

The finest reviews have been for newcomer Shuler Hensley, a Marietta, Georgia., native who is a brooding revelation as the anguished farm hand Jud Fry. "So many times he's just played as a bad guy," said Hensley, speaking from his dressing room the day before the July 15 opening night that would make him a star. "What makes this production different is that he's had the bad breaks rather than that he's ultimately bad. "I've gotten a lot of feedback from people saying, 'I don't want Jud to die. I feel for him.' That makes the tragedy that much more important."

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