Oklahoma!

Story

Oklahoma! depicts life amongst farmers and cowhands in Oklahoma territory, in 1906. Cowboy Curly is in love with Laurey Williams, a farm girl. Laurey secretly adores Curly but plays hard to get and accepts an invitation to go to a dance with Jud, a lonely and sinister farm hand. After much confusion, dancing, trickery and playful antics, Laurey and Curly get married, but Jud harbours resentment right until the final scene.

Why we chose it

Oklahoma! was Rodgers and Hammerstein’s first musical together, and was a sensation, generally recognised as heralding the ‘golden age’ of musical theatre of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.

The musical was the first to feature a ‘dream sequence’, a 15 minute professionally danced ballet section, in which Laurie tries to make up her mind about her two lovers. Dream sequences played a key role in musicals for the next two decades.

Another ground-breaking element of this musical was the collaborative way that Rodgers and Hammerstein worked. Hammerstein would write the lyrics first, and then Rodgers would set the words to music. In his previous projects, Rodgers would write the music first. This was standard at the time - so musicals up until now had centred on the songs around which a plot would be (sometimes awkwardly!) thought out. This reversal meant that now, the story came first, and the music was an emotional expression of it. Rodgers’ music is characterised by catchy tunes, rhythmic vitality and brilliant orchestration.

Where it came from

Oklahoma! grew out of the popularity of musicals set in motion in the 1920s and 1930s with Show Boat and others. Producer Theresa Helburn from the Theatre Guild came up with the idea to create a musical from Green Grow the Lilacs, a play by Oklahoma-born playwright Lynn Riggs.

Where it went next

Oklahoma! ran for 2,212 performances and was seen by more than 4.5 million people. A touring company was sent to take the show to a Pacific war zone, where it played to one and half million US servicemen.

In 1944, Rodgers and Hammerstein won a Pulitzer Prize for the musical. It became the first ever musical to be recorded in full by the original cast. A film version was made in 1955.

Oscar-winning actor Hugh Jackman landed his first international role when he was cast as Curly in a production at the National Theatre in London in 1998.

Associated stories

Rogers and Hammerstein were a dream team. All their shows became lavish, hugely successful musicals with best-selling cast recordings. They also wrote Carousel (1945) about a girl who finds love at a fairground; The King and I (1944), about a nanny who falls in love with the King of Thailand; The Sound of Music (1959) on the singing Von Trapp family, and South Pacific (1949), set on a south Pacific island during World War II. The powerful plots and feelgood melodies were a form of welcome escapism from the gloomy post-war years.