Interview: Director Shuler Hensley on Lush OKLAHOMA! Concert at Carnegie Hall

On Monday January 12, 2026 at 7 pm, New York’s Orchestra of St. Luke’s will bring Rodgers and Hammerstein’s first Broadway classic, Oklahoma!, to the Carnegie Hall concert stage. Conducted by Emmy- and Grammy-winning music director Rob Berman, this concert features the original orchestrations by iconic Broadway and Hollywood arranger Robert Russell Bennett. The cast (depicted in the header photo above) includes Emmett O’Hanlon, Micaela Diamond, Jasmine Amy Rogers, Andrew Durand, Ana Gasteyer, Jonathan Christopher, Parvesh Cheena and David Hyde Pierce.

We spoke with the director of this production, Shuler Hensley, who won Drama Desk and Tony Awards for his portrayal of Jud Fry in the 2002 Broadway revival of Oklahoma! He said of the show that “Oklahoma [to me] is the quintessential American musical. It was like the Hamilton of its day. Before Oklahoma, you had a standard way of looking at musicals. There was a formula, and [Oklahoma] was just something that people had never heard of.” Indeed, producer Michael Todd saw an early production of Oklahoma! in out-of-town tryouts and allegedly remarked, "No legs, no jokes, no chance.”

This concert kicks off OSL’s 2026 season, which celebrates American music in honor of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The Oklahoma! concert is currently sold out except for accessible seats (contact Carnegie Hall to inquire about a wait list), but you can see the other upcoming shows in OSL’s season on their website here, as well as where to follow them to be the first to find out when their next season is announced.

Below, read a conversation with Shuler about Oklahoma!

What are you the most excited about for this performance of Oklahoma at Carnegie Hall?

Honestly, from a selfish standpoint... I've had such a long relationship with this piece, starting back at the National Theater in 1998 and meeting Hugh Jackman before he was Hugh Jackman, and [meeting] friends that I've developed over the years... the one thing I never personally got a chance to do is to sing it with such a large full orchestra—45-plus instruments—and in a venue like Carnegie Hall, where there's such a history of performances. That's what I'm most excited about, because I do know this score and the music so well, but to hear it with that amount of sound in that venue is going to be pretty thrilling.

Your production is almost sold out. Is this something that you're planning on putting on again?

I would put on Oklahoma any and everywhere. It’s interesting. These are all personal experiences for me, but coming out of the pandemic where, when we started that, we were like, “Oh, you know, we're going to close. It's probably going to be a week. I'll leave my makeup at my dressing room table and blah, blah, blah.” And then [it] was an incredible amount of time that people were out of work and theater was lost. And I got the good fortune of coming back to Broadway in Music Man, which is another great American musical. And what that showed me was the audiences that came to that were so comforted, were so reinvigorated, because it was familiar to them, and yet it was an amazing piece of theater that seemed timeless.

And that's what I feel like Oklahoma is. And when it's done well and when it's done with this type of musical accompaniment, with orchestra, it's really one of those things that I think a lot of people in this day and age have not been exposed to, and it's important to be.

This is part of Orchestra of St. Luke's concert series, and I do think orchestras are wise in programing American musicals because audiences for Beethoven and Mozart, they love that, but to be exposed to the American musical in an orchestral concert is something that's important.

Is there anything that you’d want people to know about Oklahoma going into this?

This is an orchestra concert. There's not going to be choreography. There’s not going to be dance numbers. It's not going to be fully staged with costumes. It's really about coming to it and having that experience of it being a concert version of the musical. We're going to be doing the scenes and the book, but it's not going to have sets and all the glamor of that.

And that's something that I really also love, because I think sometimes we underestimate our audience in terms of needing cutting-edge technology and sets and changing the story and and making it controversial or some sort of a thing, when classics are classic for a reason. And this is really about the music, about the sound and about the story in its simplest form.

Sometimes when you present something like that, there are some elements of it that people find that they didn't find with other versions because it's laid bare like that.

As an actor too, [I feel that it’s] important to not underestimate the audience. I don't know that you need anything extra with something as profound as this story in its original version.

Do you have any other upcoming things that you want to plug?

For me personally? I run a theater in Atlanta. I'm the artistic director there, too, and I do a lot of directing. I'm going to be directing a Come From Away there in March. What I like about being a working actor and director is that I get a chance to sit on both sides of the table and I know where the actors are coming from. And then, I also know where the producers and the directors are coming from, so for me, it's a nice ability to go on both sides of the equation to get perspective on theater in general. That's what I'm really, really enjoying doing now in this part of my career. I'm always wanting to stay relevant as a performer. And by doing that, I think it informs me as a director and as an artistic director.

Is there anything else that you want to add about the production of Oklahoma or anything else that we haven't touched on yet?

I really find the Orchestra of St. Luke's is a profoundly valuable orchestra in the world in terms of its programing and the energy of it. I got to do A Little Night Music last year with Valerie Broderick.

This coming season is the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. And so I think [OSL’s] programing is all geared towards celebrating American musicals and American music, and I think that's a brilliant programing thing to honor and to celebrate.

I can't think of a better, better piece of musical theater to start a season like that off, and in a venue like Carnegie Hall. I think that's what's exciting. And I think that's what people are going to find exciting who come to it. And that's what we're celebrating.

Learn more about Shuler Hensley on Instagram @shulerhensley.

Find tickets to OSL’s 2026 season on their website here