TPAC's Oklahoma!
Oklahoma! Comes Home
By Ashe Lynne
There is an unusual challenge inherent in producing Oklahoma! in Oklahoma.
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s landmark musical has spent more than eighty years embedded in the American theatrical consciousness, but here, its title carries an additional weight. The waving wheat, expansive skies, territorial bravado, and familiar melodies are not merely the trappings of a Golden Age musical. For Oklahomans, they belong to a piece of cultural mythology we have inherited, complicated though that inheritance may be.
For me, Oklahoma! carries an even more personal history.
Some of my earliest memories of live theatre are of summer evenings spent with my mother at Discoveryland, watching Oklahoma! unfold beneath the open Oklahoma sky. It was the first professional theatrical production I can remember seeing, and before I understood anything about Rodgers and Hammerstein, Broadway history, or the mechanics of putting on a musical, I understood that I loved it.
More specifically, I loved Ado Annie.
She was funny and fearless, romantic and ridiculous, and completely captivating to a little girl sitting in the audience. Somewhere between “I Cain’t Say No” and the final curtain, I fell in love with her; and, without realizing it at the time, with musical theatre itself.
Years later, my relationship with Oklahoma! would come full circle in a way I hadn't anticipated.
As a working actress within Oklahoma's theatre community, I knew about this production well before the first advertisements began appearing. Like many local performers, I received the audition notice; and when the opportunity came, I auditioned. I was one of more than 600 performers from across Oklahoma who stepped forward hoping for the chance to become part of this production.
I wasn't cast.
That fact is worth disclosing in a review such as this, but it is also only a small part of the story. Because once the disappointment inherent to any unsuccessful audition had passed, one thing remained unchanged: I wanted this production to succeed.
There is something remarkable about hundreds of Oklahoma performers answering the call for Oklahoma! It speaks to the depth of talent within this state, certainly, but also to the peculiar ownership many of us feel toward this musical. For some, it is a theatrical classic. Here, it is also ours.
So, if I wasn't going to find myself beneath the lights, there was still one place I very much wanted to be: in the audience.
And perhaps that was fitting- after all, that was where Oklahoma! and I first met.
Returning to that seat as an adult- as an actress now able to understand the craft behind what I was watching- created an unusual collision between memory and experience. Nostalgia is a generous critic. It remembers summer nights and music more readily than pacing, characterization, choreography, or technical execution. And returning to something that helped shape your love of theatre carries the risk of asking a new production to recreate a feeling that belonged to another time.
Thankfully, this production did not ask me merely to remember why I loved Oklahoma!
At its best, it gave me new reasons to.
A Familiar Oklahoma, Seen Again
That distinction became apparent before I ever took my seat.
The experience of this Oklahoma! began not with the orchestra, but in the lobby, where the production assembled something of a miniature museum honoring the musical and its history. Original production photographs and memorabilia invited patrons to linger rather than simply pass through on their way to the theatre, including an original costume worn by Laurey.
For all the history on display, however, it was the sight of Laurey’s boots that struck a particular chord in this Okie girl’s heart.
We do love our boots.
That small moment encapsulated much of what made the evening feel special before the performance had even begun. There was a sense that Oklahoma! was not simply being staged here; it was being welcomed home.
I chose to extend that experience by attending the optional pre-show dinner, where the evening leaned enthusiastically into Oklahoma hospitality. The menu featured pulled pork and brisket barbecue, garlic mashed potatoes, baked beans, iced tea, lemonade, and cupcakes for dessert- a spread that felt appropriately hearty for the occasion.
I will, however, lodge one extremely specific grievance on behalf of my childhood: the dessert should have been berries and cream. Those who remember the old Discoveryland days may understand. The cupcakes were perfectly nice, but nostalgia is stubborn, and apparently mine comes with a preferred dessert course.
More important than the meal itself was the entertainment accompanying it. Members of the cast- including some of the production’s principal performers- offered a selection of traditional country and western music, even throwing some yodeling into the mix. It was relaxed, playful, and charmingly suited to the evening, giving the audience an opportunity to encounter the performers outside the formal structure of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s score.
It also accomplished something surprisingly valuable: by the time we were invited to enter the theatre, the production had already begun establishing its world. The transition from lobby exhibit, to communal meal, to live music, and finally into the auditorium created an atmosphere that felt less like simply arriving for a performance and more like gathering for one. For a musical so fundamentally concerned with the creation of community, that distinction felt particularly appropriate.
And then, finally, it was time to see what waited beyond the theatre doors.
Into the Theatre
The Williams Theatre at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center is always a warm and welcome sight to this theatre girl. It occupies something of a theatrical sweet spot: large enough to carry the scale and polish expected of a professional production, yet intimate enough that the performers never feel impossibly distant from the audience. There is a familiarity to the space that lends itself particularly well to a story built around community.
We were met by kind and welcoming ushers who helped guide us to our seats, where a large scrim bearing the outline of the state of Oklahoma and the title of the show greeted the audience. It was simple, immediately recognizable, and allowed the anticipation to build behind it.
Then the lights went down.
Before we saw Aunt Eller’s farm or heard Curly sing a single word, however, another character made itself known: the orchestra.
And what an orchestra it was.
From the opening notes, director Cathy Venable and company delivered Rodgers and Hammerstein’s score with remarkable precision and richness. The sound was full enough to have the sweep of a film score while retaining the energy that can only come from music being created live in the room. The orchestra never seemed to fight the performers for attention, nor did it disappear beneath them. Instead, it became the current carrying the production forward.
My daughter and several of her friends- all band kids themselves paid the orchestra perhaps the best compliment young musicians can give. At several points during the evening, they admitted they had forgotten they were listening to a live orchestra because it sounded that good.
As the overture continued, the scrim gently faded away and the world behind it began to emerge.
There was Aunt Eller, played by Thesa Young.
Before dialogue formally introduced us to her, we watched her move about her farm, already inhabiting the rhythms of an Oklahoma summer. There was an ease and practicality to the moment that immediately communicated something about the woman we were meeting. This was her home. There was work to be done, the day was already warm, and she did not need an opening line to establish that she belonged there.
It was an effective piece of visual storytelling and, more importantly, a confident one. The production did not rush to announce itself. Instead, it allowed the audience a moment simply to settle into Aunt Eller’s world.
And then, across that Oklahoma morning, came a voice we all knew was coming.
“There's a bright golden haze on the meadow…”
The first notes seemed to drift in on a breeze long before our leading man ever appeared onstage.
It was a lovely choice. We did not have to see Curly McLain to know precisely who was approaching Aunt Eller’s farm- or that the performer playing him, Conor Jordan, was about to give us a commanding and charismatic leading-man performance.
Jordan’s voice is an ideal fit for Curly: clear and strong, warm without sacrificing power, and carrying just enough vibrato to make you swoon. There is an ease to his delivery that keeps the song from becoming merely a showcase for vocal ability. He does not seem to arrive announcing, Here is one of the most famous opening numbers in musical theatre. Instead, the melody feels as though it belongs naturally to Curly, as though singing about the morning is simply what this particular cowboy happens to do while making his way across the territory.
That distinction matters.
“Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’” is so deeply embedded in the American musical-theatre canon that it would be easy to perform the song as an artifact: beautifully sung, respectfully presented, and entirely predictable. Jordan avoids that trap. His Curly arrives with an immediate sense of confidence and charm, and his voice establishes the character before the audience is ever given the opportunity to take in the boots, hat, swagger, or smile.
For me, hearing those familiar notes carried an additional weight. I had heard this song beneath an Oklahoma summer sky as a little girl at Discoveryland. I had heard it countless times in the years since. Now, sitting in the Williams Theatre all these years later, I found myself waiting for something I knew almost by heart.
And still, when that voice came drifting toward Aunt Eller’s farm, it felt like an arrival.
Not simply Curly’s.
Mine, too.
If Curly announces himself first through his voice, Laurey is afforded much the same introduction- a small but effective piece of mirroring that establishes the pair as equals before their courtship has even properly begun. Once again, we hear her before we see her, and what we hear is a voice strong and clear as a bell.
Then Ruby Shadley steps onto the stage opposite Jordan, and the visual contrast between the two is almost comical. Shadley is perhaps half Jordan’s size, but within moments it becomes abundantly clear that Laurey has absolutely no intention of allowing Curly- or anyone else- to take up all the space in the room.
Nor does Shadley.
Her Laurey is spunky, energetic, and wonderfully youthful. That last quality is more important than it might initially seem. There is a tendency with Golden Age musicals to allow the weight of their own legacy to age their characters prematurely. These roles have been performed for generations, their songs have become standards, and their romances can consequently acquire a kind of stately theatrical polish that makes it easy to forget just how young many of these characters are supposed to be. Shadley doesn't let us forget.
Her Laurey feels like a young woman still discovering the difference between what she wants, what she thinks she ought to want, and what she is willing to admit she wants- which, unfortunately for Curly, are three entirely different things.
That youthful energy also gives the familiar sparring between Laurey and Curly a welcome sense of immediacy. Opposite Jordan’s easy confidence, Shadley is a spark: quick to challenge him, quick to bristle, and seemingly determined never to give him the satisfaction of knowing when he has managed to charm her.
The difference in their physical stature only makes the dynamic more entertaining. Jordan may tower over her, but Shadley never seems diminished beside him. Laurey meets Curly at full force, and their scenes quickly establish that whatever romance develops between these two will not be built around one overwhelming the other.
Instead, the pleasure is in watching two formidable personalities discover just how badly they have miscalculated the other- and how little either one enjoys being the first to surrender.
Beyond the Romance
Of course, Curly and Laurey may sit at the center of Oklahoma!, but the territory surrounding them is populated by characters who are anything but background decoration. This is a musical built upon personalities- some charming, some ridiculous, some unsettling- and this production wisely allows its supporting players room to make their mark.
No supporting performance carries more responsibility for the production’s tonal balance than Jud Fry.
Jud is one of the strangest and most difficult characters in the Golden Age musical canon. He is unquestionably threatening, particularly in his fixation on Laurey, but Rodgers and Hammerstein also refuse to make him an uncomplicated villain. A successful Jud must allow us to understand the loneliness of the man without asking us to excuse what that loneliness eventually becomes.
Kasey Dillon Yeargain understands that distinction remarkably well.
Yeargain’s Jud initially appears quiet, socially awkward, and surprisingly unimposing despite the actor’s considerable physical stature. Rather than using his size to immediately signal danger, Yeargain seems almost to fold that presence inward. The result is a Jud who, at least initially, appears less like a monster lurking at the edges of Laurey’s world and more like a deeply isolated man who has never quite learned how to exist comfortably within it.
It invites an uncomfortable degree of sympathy.
Even as we enter the smokehouse, the production initially allows us to wonder whether Jud has become an outsider because of his own behavior or whether years of being treated as an outsider have helped shape the man now standing before us. The direction wisely resists answering that question for the audience. Instead, details scattered throughout the set and dialogue ask us to assemble our own understanding of him.
Then the cracks begin to appear.
A conversation turns toward Jud’s suspiciously specific knowledge of an “accidental” fire in another county, and suddenly the quiet farmhand we thought we understood becomes considerably harder to read. Yeargain does not transform Jud all at once. Instead, he allows flashes of something more troubling to break through, a succession of red flags that become increasingly difficult for both Curly and the audience to dismiss.
That gradual revelation makes “Lonely Room” all the more effective. Yeargain delivers the number with depth and emotional weight, giving voice to Jud’s aching desire for the life he watches everyone else enjoying from a distance. For a few minutes, we are permitted inside the loneliness that has defined him. But importantly, understanding that loneliness does not absolve him. As the song develops, longing begins to curdle into entitlement. Laurey is no longer simply a woman Jud desires; in his imagination, she begins to resemble the answer to everything he believes the world has denied him. And that is where Yeargain’s interpretation becomes genuinely unsettling. The danger of this Jud is not that he arrives looking like a villain. It is that, for a little while, we can understand him.
By the time the red flags become impossible to ignore, the production has already forced us to confront the more uncomfortable question: how much of what we initially interpreted as harmless awkwardness were we willing to overlook simply because we felt sorry for the lonely man displaying it?
That distinction is essential. Jud does not need to be redeemed for his loneliness to matter, nor does acknowledging his humanity diminish the threat he ultimately poses. If anything, allowing both realities to coexist makes him considerably more unsettling than a conventional villain.
Fortunately, Oklahoma! rarely allows its darkness to linger uninterrupted.
If Jud Fry brings the production toward its darkest territory, Grayson Schreiber’s Will Parker comes galloping in from the opposite direction.
Schreiber brings an adorable youthfulness- and an almost willful ignorance- to Will that makes him every bit as exasperating as the woman he intends to marry. His voice is clear and strong, and he leans enthusiastically into Will’s cowboy swagger, creating a young man thoroughly convinced of his own charm even when his decision-making gives the audience ample reason to question it.
It is an entertaining interpretation, though not always an entirely endearing one.
Will Parker works best, for me, when beneath all the bravado, jealousy, and spectacularly poor financial judgment there remains something unmistakably earnest about his love for Ado Annie. He may be a sweet idiot, but he is her sweet idiot- and we should understand why these two maddening people keep finding their way back to one another.
Schreiber’s Will occasionally leaves that tenderness harder to find.
His performance favors the arrogance of the cowboy over the earnest yearning of the young man in love. His antics are entertaining, but there are moments when his determination to marry Annie seems motivated less by devotion to her than by the stubborn certainty that she is the prize he has already decided to claim.
That distinction becomes particularly noticeable because Annie herself is such an irrepressibly independent presence. When Will attempts to establish the rules by which she ought to behave, the comedy is certainly there, but the affection beneath their constant negotiation does not always land with equal clarity.
It leaves us with an interesting question about this Will Parker: is he the sweet idiot who genuinely adores Annie despite having absolutely no idea what to do with her, or is he an egotistical young cowboy determined to rope the one prize that stubbornly refuses to stay caught?
Schreiber gives us plenty of the latter.
I simply found myself wishing for a little more of the former.
Then there is Ali Hakim, played by Hassan Nazari-Robati, the traveling peddler who possesses considerably more worldly experience than Will and somehow finds that experience doing him very little good.
Caught somewhere between Will and Annie is Ali, a character who presents a particular challenge for any contemporary production of Oklahoma!.
Written in 1943 as the flirtatious Persian peddler perpetually attempting to avoid matrimony, Ali can easily become a collection of dated stereotypes played almost exclusively for laughs. Hassan largely sidesteps that trap, giving us less of a caricature and more of an aloof, well-traveled older gentleman who has wandered into this particular corner of Oklahoma, conducted some business, gotten himself thoroughly entangled in everyone else's romantic affairs, and would now very much like to be on his way.
Hassan's comic timing is impeccable, his vocals assured, and his accent and physical characterization remain consistent without overwhelming the character. His wonderfully flashy costuming only adds to the impression of a man who has arrived from a much larger world than the one occupied by the farmers and cowboys around him.
Where the interpretation becomes more complicated is in his relationship with Annie.
Hassan's Ali seems amused by her, certainly, and attracted to her, but there is little suggestion of genuine tenderness beneath their flirtation. That choice makes their relationship feel considerably more transactional than romantic- which may very well be appropriate for Ali- but it also changes the temperature of their eventual “Persian goodbye.”
Rather than landing as an unexpectedly affectionate farewell between two people who know they were never going to belong together, the moment feels just a little…skeezy.
It is funny, but not particularly endearing.
And yet my greatest frustration with Hassan's Ali has relatively little to do with Hassan himself. In fact, it is almost the opposite.
I wanted more of him.
The script has a tendency to treat Ali Hakim as something of a comedic utility player: he arrives, creates romantic complications, delivers punchlines, and is eventually shuffled toward the edge of the story once his usefulness to the central relationships has expired. Hassan's performance made that limitation unusually apparent because he gives Ali enough specificity and charisma to suggest a far more interesting person just beyond the boundaries of what the text allows us to see.
Who is this man when he isn't escaping an engagement? Where has he traveled? What does he make of these strange cowboys and farmers? What brought him here, and where exactly is he going next?
Rodgers and Hammerstein are not particularly interested in answering those questions.
Hassan's performance made me wish they had been.
It Takes a Territory
For all its memorable principal characters, Oklahoma! has never truly belonged to Curly and Laurey alone.
It belongs to the territory.
Rodgers and Hammerstein populated their musical with farmers and cowmen, wives and daughters, neighbors and rivals- people whose individual lives gradually converge into the community that will eventually stand together and give the musical its name. That makes the ensemble considerably more than scenery behind the leads. They are, in many ways, the world of Oklahoma! itself.
Considering the more than 600 performers who reportedly auditioned for this production, the extraordinary depth of talent onstage begins to make sense. If the creative team set out to gather some of the best performers Oklahoma has to offer, the results speak loudly for themselves.
There is simply no weak link in this ensemble.
Vocally, there is no sense that the production's talent has been concentrated solely within its principal roles. Individual voices emerge from the company with clarity, strength, and unmistakable technical training before blending seamlessly back into the larger sound. When the full company sings together, the result has the polish and precision of a Broadway cast recording- except, of course, there is nothing recorded about it. These voices are being produced live, in the room, night after night. Combined with the exceptional orchestra, the effect is formidable.
But technical excellence alone does not make a memorable ensemble. Precision without personality can leave even the most accomplished company feeling strangely anonymous.
This company is anything but.
Every movement feels polished without appearing sterile, and individual personalities continue to emerge even within the largest production numbers. Farmers and cowmen do not simply enter, execute choreography, sing their harmonies, and disappear again. They seem to arrive with relationships, opinions, rivalries, and lives already in progress.
One directorial choice contributes enormously to that impression: nearly every member of the ensemble, if not every one, appears to be entrusted with at least one spoken moment of their own.
It may seem like a small thing. It isn't.
Giving those moments to ensemble performers communicates something important about how director Pete Otis has chosen to build this community. No one on that stage is treated as human scenery. Each performer is given an opportunity, however brief, to step forward and contribute an individual voice to the territory being created around them.
It is also a generous acknowledgement of the performers themselves. In a production born from an audition pool numbering in the hundreds, it would have been easy to assemble a technically excellent chorus and leave the storytelling primarily to the principals. Instead, Otis appears determined to showcase the depth of the company he selected.
The result is an ensemble that does not feel like an ensemble.
It feels like a town.
But Oklahoma! is a musical that demands as much from the bodies of its ensemble as it does from their voices.
And that is where choreographer Jen Alden enters the conversation.
Dance has always occupied an unusually important place within Oklahoma!. Agnes de Mille's original choreography famously helped establish that movement in musical theatre could do more than decorate a song- it could reveal character, advance narrative, and give physical form to emotions the characters themselves could not articulate.
Alden therefore inherits both an extraordinary playground and an intimidating legacy.
Alden’s instinct for choreography is evident in nearly every step taken across the stage. Her movement vocabulary refuses to confine itself to any one discipline, blending contemporary movement with ballet, jazz, musical-theatre tradition, and a healthy dose of good old-fashioned two-steppin’. On paper, that combination might sound crowded. Onstage, Alden makes the styles feel as though they have always belonged beside one another.
The result is a delight for both the eyes and the heart.
More importantly, the choreography rarely feels like movement included simply because Oklahoma! is expected to have big dance numbers. Alden understands that dance in this musical has a storytelling responsibility. Her performers do not stop being farmers, cowboys, sweethearts, rivals, and neighbors when the choreography begins. Personality remains embedded within the steps.
That is particularly impressive given the technical polish of the company. The movement is clean and carefully constructed, but never so pristine that the people performing it disappear beneath the choreography. Alden allows room for swagger, flirtation, competition, humor, and occasionally outright chaos, making the dance feel like a natural extension of the community we have already come to know.
It is one thing to choreograph dancers.
It is another to choreograph characters.
Alden does the latter.
That versatility is perhaps clearest when comparing three of the production's major dance sequences, each of which asks Alden to accomplish something entirely different.
“Kansas City” is Alden at her most unabashedly playful. The number capitalizes on the youthful goofiness of Will Parker and the wonderful contradiction of a small Oklahoma community simultaneously fascinated by- and wholly unimpressed with- his tales of the big city. Will may have returned convinced that Kansas City has exposed him to wonders beyond his neighbors' comprehension, but the ensemble is not about to let him become too impressed with himself.
Alden captures that dynamic through energetic tap choreography infused with plenty of two-steppin' flair. The combination is clever: the tap evokes the theatrical excitement and supposed sophistication of the city Will cannot stop talking about, while the Western influence keeps the number firmly planted in the territory to which he has returned. The styles meet somewhere in the middle, much like Will himself, and the result is joyous, athletic, and wonderfully silly.
“The Farmer and the Cowman” takes a different approach. Rather than allowing the longstanding tension between the two groups to build toward anything genuinely threatening, Alden and director Pete Otis keep the number remarkably light. The conflict becomes fertile ground for physical comedy, individual jokes, and playful interactions between performers. Even as tempers flare, there remains a sense that we are watching neighbors squabble rather than enemies preparing to tear their community apart.
Comedically, it works. Dramatically, the choice softens one of the musical's underlying conflicts. By the end of the number, the farmer-cowman rivalry still feels more like a particularly enthusiastic local disagreement than a social divide in danger of boiling over. Whether that is a strength may depend upon what one wants from Oklahoma!; this production consistently seems more interested in the affection holding its community together than the forces threatening to divide it.
Then comes the “Dream Ballet,” and Alden changes the language entirely. Here, the contemporary influences that have been woven more subtly throughout the evening step decisively into the foreground. The shift immediately separates Laurey's dream from the physical world we have inhabited until this point. We are no longer at a social gathering or watching cowboys show off. We have entered a subconscious space where movement is no longer bound by the same rules.
That separation is crucial.
The dream ballet has always served a radically different purpose from Oklahoma!'s other dance sequences. Where “Kansas City” celebrates and “The Farmer and the Cowman” dramatizes community, the ballet gives physical form to everything Laurey cannot, or will not, say aloud.
Alden's contemporary vocabulary allows that interior world to become increasingly unstable. What begins within the recognizable language of Laurey's hopes and desires gradually distorts as Jud's presence intrudes, carrying the sequence away from romantic fantasy and toward nightmare.
By its conclusion, the dream no longer feels like an ornamental ballet inserted into the middle of a Golden Age musical. It feels like exactly what it should be:
A nightmare Laurey cannot wake herself from quickly enough.
Taken together, these sequences demonstrate what makes Alden's work so effective. She does not impose a single choreographic identity upon every number. Tap can collide with two-steppin' when Will returns from Kansas City. Comedy can dominate when farmers and cowmen collide. Contemporary movement can take over when Laurey's subconscious begins to fracture.
The technique changes because the storytelling changes.
And throughout it all, Alden never seems to forget that the bodies moving across her stage belong to characters first and dancers second.
Building Oklahoma!
With a musical this familiar, a director faces a peculiar challenge: audiences may already know where the story is going, but they should never feel as though the production is simply checking off the necessary stops along the way.
Under Pete Otis's direction, this Oklahoma! feels remarkably cohesive- an accomplishment made more impressive by the fact that the musical itself does not always make cohesion easy.
There are structural hurdles built into the material. A sprawling romantic triangle between Ado Annie, Will Parker, and Ali Hakim must somehow resolve itself satisfactorily. An extended dream ballet has to emerge organically from Laurey's subconscious rather than feeling like a random ballet wandered in from another musical. The central romance must shift from playful courtship into genuine fear and danger before returning toward celebration. And then, remarkably late in the evening, a man dies and the musical must find its way back to a wedding and a triumphant title number.
That's a lot to ask of any director.
For most of the evening, Otis navigates those tonal and structural obstacles with an impressively steady hand.
The pacing is particularly strong. At nearly three hours, Oklahoma! is a marathon of a musical, but this production rarely feels like one. Scenes move with purpose, transitions are exceptionally smooth, and the evening maintains enough momentum that its considerable runtime never becomes the defining feature of the experience. There is always somewhere else to go and someone else worth following when we get there.
Otis also demonstrates a clear understanding of when the musical's emotional temperature needs to change. The shifting relationship between Laurey, Curly, and Jud is particularly well defined. What begins as youthful romantic stubbornness gradually acquires genuine stakes as Laurey begins to understand Jud differently, while Curly's rivalry with him becomes something far more serious than two men competing for the same woman.
Likewise, the dream ballet- a sequence that can easily feel disconnected from everything surrounding it- is integrated successfully into Laurey's emotional journey. Combined with Jen Alden's contemporary-inflected choreography, the sequence feels less like the obligatory preservation of a famous piece of musical-theatre history and more like an actual dream deteriorating into nightmare.
Not every transition lands with equal grace.
The comedy occasionally moves a little too quickly. A punchline needs room to breathe, particularly in a theatre where the audience's laughter becomes part of the rhythm of a scene. At times, the next line arrives before the previous joke has quite had the opportunity to land, creating a few moments of awkwardness where the audience seems to be catching up to performers already moving toward the next beat.
The romantic resolution between Annie and Will also remains less convincing than the central romance. Some of that difficulty is inherited from the text itself, but given the characterization established earlier in the production, their eventual pairing feels more inevitable because the script requires it than emotionally inevitable because these particular two people have convinced us they belong together.
The production's most significant tonal stumble, however, comes with the death of Jud.
After spending so much of the evening carefully complicating our understanding of him- first inviting sympathy for his isolation, then gradually revealing the increasingly disturbing man beneath it- his death deserves weight. Instead, it passes remarkably quickly.
The aftermath feels rushed, almost brushed aside in the production's determination to reach the celebration waiting beyond it. This is admittedly a problem embedded within Oklahoma! itself: Rodgers and Hammerstein ask an audience to process a violent death, a hurried judgment of Curley's actions, and a return to matrimonial joy in astonishingly little time. But because Yeargain and Otis have spent the evening making Jud more than a disposable villain, the speed with which the production ultimately disposes of him becomes even more conspicuous.
For a production so adept at allowing us to sit with the uncomfortable ambiguity of Jud Fry, I wished it had allowed us to sit with his absence just a little longer.
Painting the Territory
Visually, however, the production rarely puts a boot wrong.
The scenic design is spectacular, embracing a lush Golden Age interpretation of Oklahoma rather than attempting to strip the musical of its theatrical romanticism. This is not necessarily Oklahoma as it literally was. It is Oklahoma as Rodgers and Hammerstein dreamed it: expansive, warm, colorful, and just heightened enough to exist somewhere between landscape and memory.
That choice feels entirely appropriate for the production Otis has created.
Particularly beautiful is the treatment of the Oklahoma sky. Vibrant sunset colors wash across the stage, and subtle shifts in lighting allow the sky itself to become part of the storytelling. Morning, afternoon, sunset, romance, celebration, and unease are communicated not only through dialogue and music but through changes in the world surrounding the characters.
The lighting cues are so seamless that it would be easy not to notice how much work they are doing- which is perhaps one of the greatest compliments that can be paid to technical theatre.
That same precision extends throughout the production. Scene changes move smoothly, technical elements arrive without calling unnecessary attention to themselves, and even a show of this scale seems to flow from one location and emotional beat into another without visible strain.
There is considerable machinery required to make a production like Oklahoma! look effortless.
This company makes it look effortless anyway.
And perhaps that is the clearest expression of Otis's overall approach. His Oklahoma! does not seem particularly interested in dismantling Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical or apologizing for its age. Instead, it embraces much of what generations of audiences have loved about it- the romance, humor, music, dancing, sweeping skies, and unabashed theatricality- while finding carefully chosen places to allow contemporary performance and perspective to enter.
It is recognizably the Oklahoma! many of us remember.
But it is not trapped there.
And nowhere is that distinction more meaningful to me than in the production's interpretation of the character I had been waiting all evening to meet again.
Ado Annie, Reconsidered
Of all the characters I was prepared to meet again, none carried more expectation for me than Ado Annie. Perhaps unfairly so. She was my first favorite musical-theatre character, and decades of affection are difficult competition for any performer.
And somehow, this production made me fall in love with her all over again.
Becca Worthington gives Annie all the exuberance the role demands- the humor, impulsiveness, sensuality, and wonderfully disastrous certainty that every feeling she experiences must surely be the most important feeling anyone has ever felt. But this interpretation also gives her something I had never been able to see in the character before: a more distinctly Oklahoman identity.
The production incorporates the actress's Native American heritage into both Annie's characterization and costuming. It is a choice that could have been merely aesthetic. Instead, it carries particular significance on an Oklahoma stage.
Indigenous identity is not peripheral to the history of Oklahoma. It is woven into the land, its communities, its history, and its present. Yet the romanticized vision of Oklahoma Territory preserved in this musical has historically offered little room for Native people to exist visibly within it. Allowing Ado Annie to carry that identity does not require rewriting Rodgers and Hammerstein's character. Instead, it allows an Oklahoma performer to inhabit one of the musical's most beloved roles without leaving part of herself outside the theatre.
For me, that representation resonated personally as well. As someone with Native heritage, there was something unexpectedly moving about returning to the character who first made me fall in love with musical theatre and seeing Native identity reflected in her.
The little girl who watched Ado Annie at Discoveryland all those summers ago would have adored this Annie.
The adult watching her now understood why seeing her this way matters.
And perhaps that is the greatest opportunity available to any revival of a work as deeply familiar as Oklahoma!: not to preserve it beneath glass, and not to change it simply for the sake of novelty, but to allow new artists and new audiences to discover themselves within it.
Because Oklahoma! has always been, at its heart, a musical concerned with the question of who gets to belong to the place everyone onstage is preparing to call home.
For an Oklahoma production in 2026, that question is worth asking.
Coming Home to Oklahoma!
Perhaps that is ultimately what makes this production of Oklahoma! feel so worthwhile.
It would have been easy to simply reproduce a beloved classic- to polish the boots, paint the sunsets, tune the orchestra, and send audiences home humming songs they already knew by heart. And there would have been pleasure enough in that.
But the best revivals remind us that preservation and stagnation are not the same thing.
Pete Otis and his company have created an Oklahoma! that clearly loves the musical it inherited. It embraces Rodgers and Hammerstein’s sweeping score, the comedy, the romance, the dancing, and all the unabashed theatricality that made the show revolutionary more than eighty years ago. It does not attempt to dismantle the material simply to prove that it can.
Instead, it allows new artists to step inside it.
That distinction matters.
This production is not without imperfections. Some comedic moments could use another breath before racing toward the next punchline. The resolution of Will and Annie's romance never quite achieves the emotional clarity of Curly and Laurey's. And after giving Jud Fry such surprising humanity and complexity, the production moves through his death and its consequences with a haste that does a disservice to some of the careful work that came before it.
But those imperfections are surrounded by an extraordinary collection of Oklahoma talent: an orchestra capable of making you forget you are listening to musicians playing live; an ensemble overflowing with voices that deserve to be heard; choreography that understands movement as storytelling; technical artistry that paints an Oklahoma sky across the stage; and principal performers willing to find something of themselves inside characters who have belonged to generations before them.
And maybe that last part is what stayed with me most.
I entered this production carrying a great deal of history.
I remembered being a little girl sitting beside my mother at Discoveryland, watching Oklahoma! beneath the summer sky. I remembered falling hopelessly in love with Ado Annie and, through her, beginning a love affair with musical theatre that would eventually carry me onto stages of my own.
Years later, when the audition notice for this production arrived, I hoped I might become a small part of its story.
I wasn't cast.
So I found myself back where the story had begun:
In the audience.
And from that seat, I watched hundreds of auditions worth of Oklahoma talent distilled into one remarkable company. I watched a new Curly wander into Aunt Eller's morning singing words I had known since childhood. I watched Laurey become young and stubborn again. I watched dancers two-step and tap their way across a territory painted in sunsets.
And I watched Ado Annie.
Only this time, the character who had once made a little Oklahoma girl fall in love with theatre carried something I had never been able to see in her before. Through this production's incorporation of its actress's Native heritage, Annie reflected another piece of Oklahoma- and, personally, another piece of me.
That matters on our stages.
Because Oklahoma! has always been a musical about belonging, even when its original vision of who belonged within the territory was incomplete. Farmers and cowmen spend the evening arguing over how they will live beside one another. Young people decide whom they will love. Outsiders struggle against the boundaries of a community that is rapidly defining itself. And eventually, all those voices join together to give themselves a name:
Oklahoma
More than eighty years after Rodgers and Hammerstein first imagined that territory, perhaps one of the most meaningful things we can do with their musical is allow more of the people who actually call this place home to see themselves standing beneath its painted sky.
As the final notes faded in the Williams Theatre, I realized that I had spent much of the evening looking backward- toward Discoveryland, toward my mother, toward the character I loved as a child, toward the audition that briefly made me wonder whether I might stand on this particular stage myself.
But I didn't leave wishing I had been up there.
I was grateful I had been in the audience.
Because for a few hours, I got to be that little girl again- watching an Oklahoma sunset appear before me, hearing those familiar melodies rise around me, and remembering exactly why I fell in love with theatre in the first place. And I got to do this beside my mother and my own daughter.
Only this time, when I looked at the stage, I could see a little more of Oklahoma looking back.
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