Word: oklahomas
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Guthrie was an itchy-footed sign painter from Oklahoma who, like a lot of his neighbors, hit the road when the Dust Bowl and the Depression coincided to ravage his native ground. There were plenty of rough spots in his path, but he used these abrasions to polish his lyrical gifts. Along the way he acquired class consciousness, and his political ballads are now magically evocative of the pain and the political passions of working-class life in the 1930s. There is opportunity in this material not only to tell a curious and moving life story, but also...
...Iowa has managed to do in the last two years is win back-to-back NCAA titles. Harvard's just not at that level, and does not play the kind of teams that the Dutchmen will bump heads with later this season, powerhouses like Iowa State and Oklahoma State...
...strange amalgam, this Oklahoma! It's an ambitious production that fiddles with and attempts to broaden the most familiar book in the musical theater, but then realizes it so sloppily that it's hard to remember that it isn't a high school stage. The freshness of the musical comes back at times when this peculiarly doctored version tries to remind its audience just why the play excited audiences who didn't know that musical performers weren't exclusively nocturnal creatures in evening clothes and taps. The conceivers of this Oklahoma! understand just how remarkable it was that a musical...
...legend goes that when Oklahoma! left Boston for New York (with the title Away We Go!) one reviewer up here kissed it off writing, "No legs, no jokes, no chance." Andy Cadiff, in his adaptation has stretched those odds, bringing in dialogue from the earlier straight play, Lynn Riggs' Green Grow the Lilacs, from which the musical was shaped. In doing so, he's underlined themes which had been implicitly obvious and undercut the celebrated cohesiveness that had made the show famous. Oklahoma! survives as a sturdy vehicle because all of its components synchronize and drive the show forward. This...
...surprise when someone attempts to resurrect a musical so often done as though it were a rare, savorable slightly missing masterpiece. Cadiff's Oklahoma! replaces things that were never gone. No matter how much hamburger helper gets poured into this show the strength of its music and a few good actors will always drive audiences to happy nostalgia for a time they never knew. The one thing that has been genuinely improved here is the end: the show has never closed so benignly or with such a nice nod to nature before...