Because it’s been around seemingly forever, because it’s a staple of high school productions, because we tend to picture the sweet-faced Shirley Jones as farm girl Laurey Williams — pick your own because — it’s easy to forget that Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!” changed the course of musical theater when it opened on Broadway in 1943.
This was an adaptation of the play “Green Grow the Lilacs” written by Lynn Riggs, who was gay, half Cherokee and born in Oklahoma when it was still called Indian Territory. “Oklahoma!” was perhaps the first so-called “book musical,” where its songs were melded into and propelled the stories of the characters.
This was also a musical that closed its first act with a 18-minute-long “dream ballet” with choreography by the legendary Agnes de Mille.
It was “definitely a revolutionary piece of storytelling in 1943,” said Sean Murray of that ballet. His Cygnet Theatre is producing “Oklahoma!” as its last show before relocating in the fall to its new Liberty Station venue, The Joan. “Nothing like that had ever been integrated into a ‘musical comedy.’
“’Oklahoma!’ opened not with a chorus of beautiful dancing farmgirls but with an old woman churning butter on an empty stage. Every single song was character driven. All the choreography blended with traditional dancing. Everything was absolutely brand new.”
Murray, Cygnet’s artistic director since its founding in 2003, has appeared in two productions of “Oklahoma!” as an actor and he is directing this staging in Old Town. “It’s a fun way to close our tenure in that building with the theater’s façade — that barn feel.”
But this production of “Oklahoma!” may be different from any you’ve seen before.
Murray drew inspiration from New York director Daniel Fish’s to-some-radical 2019 take on “Oklahoma!” which he saw twice.
“I found it fascinating,” Murray said. “It was very moving, very disturbing, Not in any way a traditional ‘Oklahoma!’ That’s what I liked about it. He tried to mine the subtext out of it that is sometimes a bit lacking in ‘Oklahoma!’”
“Even though he found infinitely darker avenues than we’re exploring, it did open the door to looking at what else in this script makes it so compelling. There are some themes and issues that get sidetracked. So how do we do an ‘Oklahoma!’ that honors the ‘Oklahoma!’ we want to see but also takes it to another place?”
Subtexts aside, the most noticeable aspects of Cygnet’s “Oklahoma!” have to do with accommodating a big show in a 246-seat, three-quarter-thrust stage theater.
“We’re doing it more the way a Shakespearean stage is done,” said Murray. “More open, more flow. Each scene hands its energy to the next scene.”
Actors will break the fourth wall at times and some will play instruments. The staging will be similar to that employed in last year’s “Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812” at Cygnet.
“A different kind of inclusive experience,” Murray calls it. “It’s a fun way to tell the story.”
Michael Louis Cusimano, who was in “Natasha, Pierre” in 2024, will co-star in “Oklahoma!” as courting cowboy Curly McLain alongside Ariella Kvashny, who starred in Cygnet’s “Evita” two years ago. Jacob Caltrider is Curly’s dangerous rival Jud Fry, with Jazley Genovese as Ado Annie, Eli Wood as Will Parker, Linda Libby as Laurey’s Aunt Eller and Ricky Bulda as traveling salesman Ali Hakim.
Murray said he’s encouraged Kvashny to portray a Laurey that he believes contemporary audiences want to see.
“This girl runs a ranch, and I want to see a really strong Laurey,” he said. “Her confusion is more about moving on from being a young girl, marrying someone and becoming a farmer’s wife, and is she ready for that kind of change? She and Curly go head to head. The harder they do, the more you realize they deeply love each other.”
Ardent “Oklahoma!” fans will hear the classic show’s memorable tunes, like “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’”, “People Will Say We’re in Love” and “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top.”
As for the storied (and to many still controversial) dream ballet sequence, “I would never cut it,” said Murray. “It’s too famous a part of the show.” But Cygnet’s will not be 18 minutes’ long, and unlike productions in which ballet dancers double for the actors, Cusimano and Kvashny will do their own dancing.
‘Oklahoma!’
When: Previews, 7 p.m. today and 2 p.m. Saturday. Opens at 7 p.m. Saturday and runs through July 27. 7 p.m. Wednesdays-Fridays; 2 and 7 p.m. Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays.
Where: Cygnet Theatre, 4040 Twiggs St., Old Town San Diego
Tickets: $30 and up
Info: 619-337-1525
Online: cygnettheatre.org
