Hammerstein grandson on Oklahoma!- Page 3

[joevitus]

Posted: 7/12/19 at 1:44pm

broadwayguy2 said: "To the above discussion about Billy Bigelow being an abuser who redeems himself in death, I would like to RESOUNDINGLY challenge that. Billy is given the CHANCE to redeem himself.

Billy hits his daughter and the Heavenly Friend tells him that he is a failure.

The original source material, Lilliom, sees the character EXPLICITLY condemned to hell. It was decided that such an ending, in the time and place in which Carousel came to the stage, would not be appropriate and palatable to the audiences. It is a correct choice, to my mind. That said, NOWHERE does it say that Billy is going to Heaven. People assume that because he leaves with the Heavenly Friend (who JUST told him he failed), and because the SOUND of the final chords of You'll Never Walk Alone is glorious, but the ending is intentionally ambiguous to be palatable to a 1940s Broadway audience who was already unsettled by the material they saw, but still true enough to Lilliom. There is more evidence that Billy is condemned and has not found his salvation.

(and yes, that god awful movie version which dumbed it down and brightened up does a good job of making people think that Billy is gloriously saved.)"

Uh, no. Read the script to the stage version of Carousel. The final scene has Billy redeemed by cheering Louse and Julie, and then led off to Paradise by the Heavenly Friend, with a nod from Dr. Selden/the Star Keeper/God, to the sound of "You'll Never Walk Alone."

Even in Liliom, he isn't definitively damned--he's just going back for more punishment before he can try again (whether he will ever succeed is an open question). But in Carousel, he's most definitely saved.

The movie is terribly executed, but that doesn't mean the ending was changed for it.

[MBFan]

Posted: 7/12/19 at 2:26pm

I thought Shirley Jones was very tactful and careful in her comments when asked about what she thought of Oklahoma! at the Tonys on the red carpet.

[joevitus]

Posted: 7/12/19 at 3:11pm

Nice write up about her attending a performance with her son, too. She seems to really like it.

[poisonivy2]

Posted: 7/12/19 at 3:24pm

I would expect Shirley Jones to have been one of the people who liked it. Or at least was open to it. I read her autobiography and she's a hearty, bawdy, frank woman. Some of the details of her marriages even bordered on TMI. I don't think anything in this production would have offended her. 

[MBFan]

Posted: 7/12/19 at 3:38pm

I could tell she didn't really care for it. She basically just said she thought the performances were good.

[poisonivy2]

Posted: 7/12/19 at 3:41pm

Did you read the New Yorker article about her attending? 

[joevitus]

Posted: 7/12/19 at 3:49pm

poisonivy2 said: "Did you read the New Yorker article about her attending?"

Yes. Personally, the show as I've heard it described sounds awful, but I'm thrilled that it worked for her and that she was so open to this interpretation.

 

[joevitus]

Posted: 7/12/19 at 3:52pm

MBFan said: "I could tell she didn't really care for it. She basically just said she thought the performances were good."

Read the New Yorker article:

Backstage, Jones and Cassidy met the cast, everybody packed into Stroker’s dressing room. “I never heard the text before today,” Cassidy said. “It’s like the Coen brothers did a rewrite.” He compared the music with Hank Williams, Chris Isaak, Patsy Cline. Daunno and Rebecca Naomi Jones came in, after showering for stage-blood removal. “My mom, Shirley,” Cassidy said, making introductions.

Daunno, looking emotional, bent down and hugged Jones tight.

“So, so wonderful,” Jones said to him, warmly. “It came alive again, somehow, for me. I wasn’t sure that was going to happen, to tell you the truth. But it did. It sure did.” 

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/06/24/shirley-jones-returns-to-oklahoma-with-her-teen-idol-son-but-without-the-surrey

[joevitus]

Posted: 7/12/19 at 3:52pm

poisonivy2 said: "I would expect Shirley Jones to have been one of the people who liked it. Or at least was open to it. I read her autobiography and she's a hearty,bawdy, frank woman. Some of the details of her marriages even bordered on TMI. I don't think anything in this production would have offended her."

Same here, really.

 

[Kad]

Posted: 7/12/19 at 4:58pm

joevitus said: "I don't think it's just a question of"purists," though I'm sure I am one. This revival only works as a reaction against the original work. It can't hold its own as a valid take on the material, indeed seems almost a complete repudiation of the original. To me that's just a faulty choice, no matter how interesting to people who don't really like the show or have simply become bored with it."

It's an exceptionally valid take on the material. It essentially operates as if the original production never existed- and, for all the huffing and puffing about the dream ballet and the ending and why is Laurey such a bitch, is a straightforward telling of the story as it is written.This production takes the extant text and draws different conclusions and focuses from it than previous productions had and applies different theatrical staging techniques and styles to it.  All revivals exist in relationship to the original productions- are only conventional revivals valid as works? Productions that are more critical are invalid?

I found it bracing, a cold splash of water on the face. It's a production that makes you question why our classics are our classics, and reexamine what they really say. 

[joevitus]

Posted: 7/12/19 at 6:08pm

Thank you for sharing this, and let me post an update that I downloaded the cast recording this morning, have fallen in love with it maybe more than any other recording of the show I've ever owned (or at least on par with the three other best recordings of the show I own) and now am watching YouTube clips of the production like crazy. I'm desperate to see it. Sad to say, I live in Houston. 

[OlBlueEyes]

Posted: 7/12/19 at 10:40pm

This is to clarify the beating of Julie by Billy in Carousel. My reference is the Live From Lincoln Center DVD starring Kelli O'Hara, Nathan Gunn, Jessie Mueller and Jason Danieley, with additional material from the original script. I was there the night of the performance, but had chosen to try a side box. The performance was staged right so far that the bench was not visible to us during the bench scene. They apologized.

Kelli I thought was too old and had too much of a commanding presence to play the poor waif Julie Jordan, but she retained her power to move the audience, or at least me.

Before the clambake:

Julie to Carrie:  "And last Monday, he hit me."

                          "Did you hit him back?"

                          "No."

                         "Why don't you should leave him."

                         "I don't want to leave him."

                         "He beats you? He's a bad man."

                         "He ain't willingly or meaningly bad."

                         "That night on the bench together. You said he was gentle then?

                        "Yes."

                        "But now he's always acting up?"

                       "No, sometimes he's gentle, even now. He's unhappy because he ain't working.

                       That's why he hit me."

                       "Did he hurt you?" 

                       "No. No!"

     Mrs. Mullin to Billy

                        "You beat her, don't you?"

                       "No. (Exasperated) I don't beat her. What's all this damn-fool talk about beatin'?

                        I hit her once - and now the whole town is - the next one I hear - I'll smash ---"

                        (Backing away from him)  "All right, all right. I take it back.

                         I don't want to get involved."

                        "Beatin' her. As if I'd beat her!"

    Julie over the dying or already dead Billy.

                        "I knew why you hit me. You were quick-tempered and unhappy. 

                         That don't excuse it. But I guess I always knew everything you were thinking.

                         But you didn't always know what I was thinking. One thing I never told you

                        because I was scared you would laugh at me, but I tell you now...I love you.

                        I love you. I was always so ashamed to say it out loud, but I said it."

(That don't excuse it.  Not included in the original script.)

Starkeeper to Billy

                        "You couldn't bear to see her cry? Why not come right out and say it? Why are you

                         ashamed you loved Julie?"

                        "I ain't ashamed of anything."

                        "Why'd you beat her?"

                        "I didn't beat her. I wouldn't beat a little thing like that. I hit her."

                        "Why'd you hit her?"

                       "Well, y'see, we'd argue. And she'd say this and I'd say that -- And she'd be right --

                        so I hit  her."

                       "Are you sorry you hit her?"

                      "I ain't sorry for nothin'."

("Are you sorry you hit her?"  Deleted from the original script in the Lincoln Center production.)

Billy to Louise

                     "I want to make you happy - Take this."

                     "No!"

                     "Please -- Dear" (Impulsively, he involuntarily slaps her hand. She is startled.)

                      (She runs into the house) "Mother!"

Heavenly Friend to Billy

                      "Failure! You struck out again blindly again. All you ever do to get out of difficulty --

                       Hit someone you love!  Failure!"

 

1)  Where I believe Billy's forgiveness is explained. (And he is forgiven and gets into heaven. No Rodgers and Hammerstein production would end any other way.)

Louise to children: "I hate you. I hate all of you." (They back away, then dance away, leaving her heartbroken and alone. Terribly alone.)

Billy to Starkeeper

                    "Why did you make me look?"

                    "You said you wanted to."

                   "I know what she's goin' through."

                  "Something like what happened to you when you was a kid, ain't it?"

2) Not a big fan of ballets popping up in the middle of musicals, but Carousel nails it.

3) The liliting "Carousel Waltz" gives nothing away to "The Beautiful Blue Danube" or "The Waltz of the Flowers."

                    

 

 

 

 

                       

 

 

[joevitus]

Posted: 7/12/19 at 11:24pm

I had no idea anyone was even questioning this. It's debatable whether Billy only hit her once--as he says--or if it happened frequently--as Carrie implies and Julie does not correct her over. But, yeah, there is abuse there. It's one of the things that made the show darker, and more complex, and more similar to serious drama in its approach than any musical that had preceded it.

[OlBlueEyes]

Posted: 7/13/19 at 7:54am

People here are wildly over analyzing the original production of Oklahoma. All you have to know is that it was developed in 1942 and premiered in March, 1943.

Topic number one in the United States was The War and all else was relegated to the back page of the newspapers. The War was not going well during that period. The Japanese had followed up Pearl Harbor by kicking our ass all over the Pacific. There was a justifiable fear of Japanese naval air attacks on West Coast cities. German U-Boats had run so wild for a period sinking merchant ships that the ability to supply England had been in doubt. Americans began being killed in large numbers.

The inevitability of victory did not seem so inevitable at the time. Proof of the fear can be found by seeing President Roosevelt, of all people, abuse presidential power by ordering 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent to be imprisoned in inland internment camps with complete disregard of their 6th and 14th Amendment right to due process of law (as in being tried and found guilty of something).

If you want to characterize Oklahoma, call it an entertainment to boost morale and reaffirm American values.

[mamaleh]

Posted: 7/13/19 at 9:19am

“[Roosevelt] of all people”. Really? You do know, don’t you, that this is the same President Roosevelt who refused to bomb the train tracks leading to Auschwitz and whose State Dept. closed entry to European Jews fleeing imprisonment and virtually certain death? And they didn’t even bomb Pearl Harbor.

[OlBlueEyes]

Posted: 7/13/19 at 11:43am

No, I didn't know that but now that you brought it up I'm going to check it out.

I always thought that the British and Americans didn't understand the extent of the holocaust until they liberated the camps.

Some say that they did know about it to a great extent.

I think they knew more than they confess, but really, who could have believed how bad it was? The Japanese committed atrocities against millions of Chinese, but the Chinese were a defeated enemy. There was precedent. The Holocaust was just coldly planned genocide. Some might bring up the U.S. and innocent lower class Japanese civilians, but I know better than to do that.

Yet in between the horrors Western Civ likes to think that it's progressing. "The Age of Reason." "The Age of Enlightenment." 

 

 

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 7/13/19 at 2:47pm

OlBlueEyes, though you are correct about the panic in the immediate aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack, OKLAHOMA! opened almost 18 months later. By that time the US had decimated the Japanese navy in the Battle of Midway and had held its own in the battle of the Coral Sea. Though the Japanese attempted to strike the American mainland with weather balloons and airplane-launching subs, these efforts went largely unreported to the American public. (A couple of people were killed by the bomb-bearing balloons; the subs with airplanes project (aimed at the Panama Canal) was canceled by the end of the war in 1945.)

Moreover, Oscar Hammerstein actually belonged to a society devoted to creating a worldwide federation based on the US' system of three (executive, legislative, judicial) branches. We may find that comically naive with hindsight, but there's no question it was a serious issue to Hammerstein during and after WWII.

Calling OKLAHOMA! a mere morale booster--like THIS IS THE ARMY and even ON THE TOWN--is simply incorrect. It no doubt served as such to the thousands of servicemen who saw it on their way to Europe, but that was never ALL that it was.

***

As for Roosevelt's failure to bomb the train tracks to Auschwitz, well, hindsight is always 20/20 as they say. But there had been reports of the death camps in British newspapers, culled from interviews with refugees and Resistance fighters. So the likelihood is that Allied governments knew, if not of the "Final Solution", then at least that a system of concentration camps had been constructed.

But that knowledge has to be set in the context of the times. Millions of Central Europeans and Russians had been killed by the German invasion of Poland and the USSR, along with tens of thousands of Brits in the Blitz. The Allies--locked in a life-and-death struggle with totalitarianism--obviously made the decision that the war effort could not be derailed by concerns over collateral damage. The fire bombing of German and Japanese cities--killing tens of thousands of civilians--is sufficient proof of Allied priorities.

It's a lovely fantasy that the Allies could have somehow bombed tracks and dropped paratroopers to liberate the death camps before the falls of Berlin and Tokyo, but it simply wasn't deemed practical at the time. Again, in context, I'm not convinced that is proof of animus against the Jews. In fact, the Allies didn't magically drop in to liberate German POW camps holding thousands of Brits and Yanks either. The camps were liberated, but only when the US or Russian Army arrived in force to support the liberation effort.

***

ETA that the treatment of Jewish refugees by the American government BEFORE the war is something else entirely. We of the USA behaved shamefully, turning back ships full of Jewish refugees to what could only be a terrible fate in Europe. This was no better morally than what we are doing now by imprisoning people fleeing political persecution and drug syndicates in Central America.

Frankly and despite the myths we like to tell ourselves, we Americans have been welcoming to refugees only when we have needed to the cheap labor to keep our economy humming.

Updated On: 7/14/19 at 02:47 PM

[MichelleCraig]

Posted: 7/13/19 at 8:14pm

I first saw OKLAHOMA! in 1979, as a teenager, at the Palace on Broadway. I also saw the revival at the Gershwin in 2002. Even as a teenager, I saw the dark underbelly of this show. I also saw it in the magnificent revival of CAROUSEL at the Vivian Beaumont in 1994.

I, as I believe many of you here, did not have to have the darkness hit me over the head...or have Curly and Laurie spattered with blood at the end of the show to get the point across.

[OlBlueEyes]

Posted: 7/14/19 at 12:22am

Since you brought up naval history, at the end of Midway the U. S. Navy had two fleet carriers in the Pacific: Enterprise and Hornet. Saratoga had no sooner returned from undergoing major repairs in San Diego when it took another torpedo and headed for the repair yard again. 

In the Pacific, the 2nd half of 1942 was spent by the Marines and Army regulars recapturing the island of Guadalcanal. This ferocious six month campaign involved a lot of naval action. In August, in the Battle of Santa Cruz, Hornet was sunk by Japanese carrier aircraft. One carrier left, Enterprise and that one tied closely to supporting the men on Guadalcanal. 

The Japanese had lost their four most senior fleet carriers at Midway, but Carrier Division Five, the last two fleet carrier veterans of Pearl Harbor, Shokaku and Zuikaku, had not been committed to Midway (if they had been we would have lost). Those carriers along with a newly commissioned one were a formidable force facing only the Enterprise, and the desire to bomb the West Coast to retaliate for the Doolittle raid over Tokyo that had posed a threat to the Emperor was strong.

Of course the military of both countries never knew with certainty the composition of the other's fleet at any particular time, and neither did civilians. But the West Coast residents were nervous about raids.

Of greater importance, the sons and husbands by early 1943 had begun to become casualties in the South Pacific, Africa and the skies over Nazi-occupied Europe. I believe that the daily news of the war forced everything into the background as long as the loved ones were in danger of being killed.

(Hollywood taking another shot at Midway with release due in November. Tricky to film with so many military units engaged in concurrent timelines.)

Why was Oklahoma produced in 1942? I didn't mean to say that Hammerstein conceived the project as a morale booster. That was what it came to be. You know that many servicemen saw the show.

Oscar felt the need to bring Green Grow the Lilacs to the musical stage. Why? I've never heard of Lilacs spoken of as a great piece of literature. I would guess that, with the war in mind, he wanted to show pioneer spirit and the farmers and the cowboys just get along together for the good of all. It would probably not be too difficult to do a little research to pin him down on his reason. 

Oscar just needed a hit show, and a top composer to work with. I don't think that he knowingly put anything deep or dark into the play. Even a light show needs some source of friction to engage the characters. Judd played the part of the source of tension and he was just not written well. And when his song is cut, then we have him just as an unfeeling monster. Similar perhaps to Carousel and Billy. Was this show progressive when the Starkeeper helps Billy to understand, in admittedly a couple of short sentences, that Billy is pained to watch Louise in pain, as he understands the feeling. Billy was not brought up by loving parents who passed on to him how to become a loving parent, and he in turn could not handle expressions of love of Louise or even Julie.

Oh, well. Enough verbose pontificating. I just finished a Henry James novel, The Golden Bowl, so now for a week I'll be speaking in long, run-on sentences.

As for the ending of the Oklahoma, would I be too cynical if I ascribed it to shock appeal? Sure, the theatergoer has experienced the quirky nature of the revival and has adjusted to it and might leave feeling positive or negative about it as he or she discussed Ado Annie in a wheelchair. But don't let them just shrug the show off as an interesting or an off-the-mark adaptation. Let them leave the theater feeling some strong emotions of any kind that will keep people talking about it days after.

That last paragraph is far more in your court than mine. As for FDR, I'm generally with you. Bombing the railyard would have been little more than symbolic. To an Eighth Air Force commander, already losing hundreds of airmen on days of heavy raids, every mission and its importance must be explained.

Again, in context, I'm not convinced that is proof of animus against the Jews. 

No animus to speak of. But to the leaders, a feeling that it is more important to get home safely as many men under their command as possible. Write as few of those letters to family as possible. "Sure, it's terrible to see these people so mistreated, if this article is accurate, but they are not my responsibility."

If you're looking for a leader who's going to address his men and get them to add three or more more missions that may help the Jews if the story is accurate.... try the other universe down at the corner.

 

[joevitus]

Posted: 7/14/19 at 12:56am

Sometimes the story goes that Hammerstein was already interested in Green Grow the Lilacs and had wanted to adapt it for some time, and had tried to interest Kern in it. But the general story is that Theresa Helburn, head of the Theatre Guild, was so pleased with a more popular summer revival of the show that she asked Richard Rogers to come see it and maybe make a musical out of it with Lorenz Hart (not knowing the team was about to break up due to Hart's alcoholism). Then Rodgers brought Hammerstein in. The initial press release said Rodgers and Hart would be writing the songs and Hammerstein the book. Of course, Hart had zero interest in doing the show at all. 

A show doesn't have to be a big hit to attract interest in musicalizing it. Indeed, why "improve" something that already works? (That's why Hammerstein at first hesitated in adapting Liliom). A work with some good elements but not wholely successful in its intial form suggests telling it in a new way can improve it. And Green Grow the Lilacs is very sympathetic to Hammerstein's preference for simple people and simple pleasures, while still not quite working for audiences in its original form--though it's an interesting play, with ideas that never really got into Oklahoma! It's easy to see why he'd want to base a musical on it. That MGM had already secured the film rights to the material shows he wasn't the only one who saw more potential there than theater audiences. 

Updated On: 7/14/19 at 12:56 AM

[OlBlueEyes]

Posted: 7/14/19 at 3:53am

Not saying that a book or play should not be adapted for musicals if it was not a hit. Should not be adapted for musicals if  not any good.

GGTL tried out for a month in Boston in 1930, opened in New York and ran for 54 performances and was never heard of again. No, that's not true. But it would have never been heard from again if not for Oklahoma!

http://vconstage.com/the-roots-of-oklahoma-come-alive-in-green-grow-the-lilacs/

The playrite stated that his intentions in writing the play were “solely to recapture in a kind of nostalgic glow the great range of mood which characterized the old folk songs and ballads I used to hear in my Oklahoma childhood.”

No deep dark motives there. Light and fluffy. And Jud, called Jeeter, was the same one-dimensional villain. He is treated marginally better in that Curly after killing him does not turn it into a joke, but apparently faces the possibility of being charged with the crime.

Nothing dark here. (Apparently the playwright in 1930 also did not know that Oklahoma at that time was just a state full of racists.) Where is all that substance people are reading into Oklahoma?

Immigration and the treatment of the indigenous populations the American Indians and the Mexicans. Obviously can't get into this, but if the other major world power all received grades of 'F' in this department, this country might receive a 'D'. 

 

[jbird5]

Posted: 7/14/19 at 5:07am

http://thislandpress.com/2014/04/30/broadways-forgotten-man/

The play, set in turn-of-the-century Claremore, concerns a young cowboy named Curly McClain and the girl he fancies, an 18-year-old orphan named Laurey Williams, who has been raised by her Aunt Eller. Laurey is attracted to Curly, but disturbed by the attentions of a crude farmhand named Jeeter Fry, who is obsessed with her. Curly and Laurey are wed, but their wedding night shivaree turns into a nightmare: After jeering rowdies force the newlyweds up a ladder to the top of a haystack, Jeeter arrives, drunk, and attempts to set the hay on fire. The two narrowly escape. Jeeter fights Curly, then falls on his own knife, and dies. Curly is arrested, but breaks jail and returns to Laurey. The marshal’s men follow, but the couple is permitted to consummate their marriage in privacy, with the understanding that Curly will be taken into custody in the morning.


That sounds pretty dark to me. My feeling is that both Riggs and Hammerstein’s vision was much darker and it got successively more bright with each revival until it got the Hollywood treatment. They turned a song about promiscuity into a cute novelty number! The problem is that none of us saw the original productions and we’re left with the movie as our reference point.

[Zion24]

Posted: 7/14/19 at 9:48am

MichelleCraig said: "I first saw OKLAHOMA! in 1979, as a teenager, at the Palace on Broadway. I also saw the revival at the Gershwin in 2002. Even as a teenager, I saw the dark underbelly of this show. I also saw it in the magnificent revival of CAROUSEL at the Vivian Beaumont in 1994.

I, as I believe many of you here, did not have to have the darkness hit me over the head...or have Curly and Laurie spattered with blood at the end of the show to get the point across."

i get a kick out of all these posts describing how they saw Oklahoma! at such and such point, and it wasn't dark, and it wasn't creepy, and the sheer ugliness of the plot didnt "hit them over the head"

Yes, exactly. I dont know what Hammerstein's intentions were, but this is a story about how one dude urges an outcast to kill himself, and then eventually that outcast is killed. The "hero" is then immediately acquitted in a show trial and the entire company then dances and sings joyously over his corpse. My question is not "How did Daniel Fish come up with this" but rather "how is it that the previous musical comedy versions of this disturbing show ever existed?"

That people saw this, loved it, deemed it a classic, is indicative of a societal cruelty that art should unmask. THEY DIDNT CHANGE A WORD and the play is just plain creepy. Thats the whole point.

[poisonivy2]

Posted: 7/14/19 at 9:52am

The NYTimes has a good comparison of how the orchestration of the revival compares to the OBCR:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/10/theater/oklahoma-musical-songs.html

[OlBlueEyes]

Posted: 7/14/19 at 12:29pm

JDonaghy4 said: "MichelleCraig said: "I first saw OKLAHOMA! in 1979, as a teenager, at the Palace on Broadway. I also saw the revival at the Gershwin in 2002. Even as a teenager, I saw the dark underbelly of this show. I also saw it in the magnificent revival of CAROUSEL at the Vivian Beaumont in 1994.

I, as I believe many of you here, did not have to have the darkness hit me over the head...or have Curly and Laurie spattered with blood at the end of the show to get the point across."

i get a kick out of all these posts describing how they saw Oklahoma! at such and such point, and it wasn't dark, and it wasn't creepy, and the sheer ugliness of the plot didnt "hit them over the head"

Yes, exactly. I dont know what Hammerstein's intentions were, but this is a story about how one dude urges an outcast to kill himself, and then eventually that outcast is killed. The "hero" is then immediately acquitted in a show trial and the entire company then dances and sings joyously over his corpse. My question is not "How did Daniel Fish come up with this" but rather "how is it that the previous musical comedy versions of this disturbing show ever existed?"

That people saw this, loved it, deemed it a classic, is indicative of a societal cruelty that art should unmask. THEY DIDNT CHANGE A WORD and the play is just plain creepy. Thats the whole point."

That's why Oklahoma has been my least favorite of the R & H classics. I don't see any sign of criticism by Oscar of the treatments of Curly and Jud. It is a joke at the end.

Does the fate of the character of Jud or Jeeter, in either GGTL or Oklahoma, offer us a universal lesson, as does South Pacific on racial prejudice, or is it just the sacrifice of one poor loser for the sake of injecting at least some action into the plot?

Kelli O'Hara, a very intelligent woman, growing up Irish Catholic on a farm in Oklahoma (she revealed in an interview that she was ostracized by the mainstream Protestant girls and also that as a preteen she was chubby and plain) was not familiar with South Pacific or Carousel but she loved her Oklahoma.

It would be so interesting to overhear a private conversation between her and Kristin Chenoweth after both had seen this Oklahoma. I would probably subjugate my opinion to their's, if they agreed.

Wouldn't Kelli be expected to see this production when she returned from Japan? To snub it would probably be taken as criticism.

I think that the original New York Times reviews of major shows are available online. I'll read it. But first I have to get out on a lovely summer day.