Oklahoma! - The Road to Success

[jo]

Lol - I do not know why but she seems to have deleted her original tweet re the reunion of the OKLAHOMA! cast

But the photos still appear on her Twitter photo gallery.

twitter.com/maureen_lipman


She seems to have replaced the earlier tweet/photos with a new tweet/clip.

[mamaleh]

Jo, so great that you connected with “Aunt Eller” ! I really enjoyed her characterization and her book “Lip Reading.”

Ellen

[jo]

Nov 25, 2017 22:46:26 GMT -5 jo said:

Lol - I do not know why but she seems to have deleted her original tweet re the reunion of the OKLAHOMA! cast

But the photos still appear on her Twitter photo gallery.

twitter.com/maureen_lipman


She seems to have replaced the earlier tweet/photos with a new tweet/clip.

I think I know now why the tweets were deleted!

The account must be Maureen Lipman's official twitter account ( like the Hugh Jackman Facebook Page, which is not really his personal account) but not sure it is her personal account.

So, it must have been the administrator of the account who was responding to me -LOL!

I became suspicious when the person asked me to follow the accounts of fellow OK! cast...and then today, when a request to Hugh Jackman to follow the official account came up.

The twitter account was also actively following what was happening to THE GREATEST SHOWMAN, so that brought up another suspeicious sign.

So, I wasn't conversing with Aunt Eller at all -- it was from her official twitter account ( which had the right background credentials on her)





Jo

[jo]

Happy Anniversary to the landmark musical OKLAHOMA! on the 75th year since its first staging!


www.broadwayworld.com/article/VIDEO-Celebrate-the-75th-Anniversary-of-OKLAHOMA-with-Rodgers-Hammersteins-Retrospective-on-the-Hit-Musical-20180330

And to us, a landmark revival by the Royal National Theatre in 1998 became Hugh Jackman's calling card to international fame and the road to success!

[njr]

Nov 27, 2017 18:59:18 GMT -5 jo said:

Nov 25, 2017 22:46:26 GMT -5 jo said:

Lol - I do not know why but she seems to have deleted her original tweet re the reunion of the OKLAHOMA! cast

But the photos still appear on her Twitter photo gallery.

twitter.com/maureen_lipman


She seems to have replaced the earlier tweet/photos with a new tweet/clip.

I think I know now why the tweets were deleted!

The account must be Maureen Lipman's official twitter account ( like the Hugh Jackman Facebook Page, which is not really his personal account) but not sure it is her personal account.

So, it must have been the administrator of the account who was responding to me -LOL!

I became suspicious when the person asked me to follow the accounts of fellow OK! cast...and then today, when a request to Hugh Jackman to follow the official account came up.

The twitter account was also actively following what was happening to THE GREATEST SHOWMAN, so that brought up another suspeicious sign.

So, I wasn't conversing with Aunt Eller at all -- it was from her official twitter account ( which had the right background credentials on her)





Jo

This is her Twitter account. When it has the blue check, you know it is official.

mobile.twitter.com/maureenlipman

Nancy

[jo]

The St. James Theatre -- where the landmark American musical opened in 1943, celebrates the anniversary with the cast of FROZEN --


www.broadwayworld.com/videoplay/BWW-TV-FROZEN-Cast-Surprises-Audience-with-Tribute-to-OKLAHOMA-on-its-75th-Anniversary-20180331

EDIT:

Also --

newsok.com/article/5589390

[jo]

Can't let the anniversary pass without hearing from one of the best Curlys on stage!

Sing, Showman, Sing

Circa 20 years ago!

The world was just about to discover Hugh Jackman

[jo]

It says BROADWAY HD - I thought that was supposed to be a defunct project?

Although, if I remember correctly, Hugh was able to record the song OH WHAT A BEAUTIFUL MORNING for that project.

If you pursue the links -- there is a subscription requirement to view it?


www.broadwayhd.com/index.php/shows/watch/Oklahoma_jackman?utm_source=hootsuite&utm_medium=socialmedia&utm_term=&utm_content=&utm_campaign=HSfeb17#sthash.D7KlbGGq.dpbs


Jo

[njr]

Yes. $14.99 to watch once. Membership is $8.99/month or $99.99/year.

[hughmanity]

I think that project was Broadway 4D?

Apr 3, 2018 9:46:08 GMT -5 jo said:

It says BROADWAY HD - I thought that was supposed to be a defunct project?

Although, if I remember correctly, Hugh was able to record the song OH WHAT A BEAUTIFUL MORNING for that project.

If you pursue the links -- there is a subscription requirement to view it?


www.broadwayhd.com/index.php/shows/watch/Oklahoma_jackman?utm_source=hootsuite&utm_medium=socialmedia&utm_term=&utm_content=&utm_campaign=HSfeb17#sthash.D7KlbGGq.dpbs


Jo

[jo]

Could they have renamed it -- the tweet seems to come from an actual organization?

Maybe because it became a long-gestating project that ran into financial problems ( mainly renovating the theatre and all the physical special effects such as in 4HD?)) and some controversy because Bryan Singer was/is one of the producers/directors?

www.playbill.com/article/broadway-4d-project-back-on-track-times-square-theatre-to-be-rescued-com-358258

Be interesting to know if the project has really been picked up by another group? And if it will only be an online service? Otherwise, shouldn't they just be charging admission if you want to visit the actual theatre ( if that ever came to completion) ...

Or did they just salvage some of the recorded material and offer it as an online service ( under BroadwayHD) instead?

Puzzling!


Jo

[jo]

Sorry for the poor video quality ... but here is a clip of the Broadway transfer of the RNT Oklahoma! sometime in 2002 ( at the time, Hugh was already working further west - Hollywood). Only familiar face is Josefina Gabrielle and not shown singing is Shuler Hensley as "Poor Jud was daid" at that time). Curly was portrayed by Patrick Wilson who works more in movies now (He was Raoul in the film adaptation of Phantom of the Opera... and movies like The Conjuring and Insidious films) than in Broadway where he was quite popular.





The title song is of course as well-known as Oh What A Beautiful Morning -- here's the RNT filmed version with Hugh et al.

[jo]

I guess Lea Salonga is ( this is dated August 2016, but re-tweeted) still gushing about that musical theatre unknown whom she saw at rehearsals singing about a beautiful mornin'

I guess this is the version of Oklahoma!-Hugh that Lea saw ( the version at the Cameron Mackintosh tribute concert) at rehearsals -- no perm yet at that point.

[njr]

I bought the VHS tape of that CM tribute concert, only to find that Hugh’s performance had been cut out! (Turned out the video was just “selected highlights”) Thanks for this video - will save it.

Nancy

[jo]

The once-dueling Gastons on the Jonathon Ross show...are now dueling, singing-wise, with OH WHAT A BEAUTFUL MORNIN'!

(Note: Clip not working at the moment -- they'll probably fix it)

[jo]

A new production of OKLAHOMA!


www.broadwayworld.com/videoplay/VIDEO-Get-A-First-Look-At-Ogunquits-OKLAHOMA-20180622#


Why does this revival and usually other revivals or school productions, compared to the RNT version, look dated? Is it the costumes ( which all seem too clean and too nice)? Is it the look of the characters ( makeup/etc)? Or does the singing focus mostly on the singing quality ( and sometimes not as accomplishded with the acting aspects)? Or is it the staging of the numbers?

Or did the directorial touch of Trevor Nunn provide us with a look at the scenes from that time, that seem more realistic ( especially with the dark aspects) and even with a hint of the contemporary? Did he guide the characters towards more realistic acting to complement the musical performances? I do remember Hugh sharing that they spent a lot of time before they even started rehearsing the musical numbers looking at and appreciating the historical background and speaking out the songs ( not singing) to emphasize the relevance of the lyrics and their intent to the storyline and the historical background of the musical?


Is this why the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization ( esp Mary Rodgers) defined this revival as the "definitive" staging of the stage musical?


Jo

[jo]

[jo]

And it's going to be shown in a cinema!


www.broadwayworld.com/new-hampshire/article/OKLAHOMA-Starring-Hugh-Jackman-Makes-Cinema-Debut-In-NH-At-Jaffreys-River-St-Theatre-20180628

London's National Theatre production of Rodgers & Hammerstein's musical OKLAHOMA! makes its exclusive New Hampshire debut at the Park Theatre's River Street Theatre in Jaffrey on July 7 and 8.

The film of the multi-award-winning Royal National Theatre production features the famed actor, singer and producer Hugh Jackman and Maureen Lipman. Directed by Trevor Nunn, artistic director of the Royal National Theatre and director of Cats, Starlight Express and Les Miserables and featuring new choreography by Susan Stroman (The Producers, Crazy For You, Showboat). Ms. Stroman won the Olivier Award for Best Choreography for OKLAHOMA!This production broke box-office records in London and was recognized by the Hammerstein estate as the definitive version of this immensely popular musical. The transition to screen was just as successful with the film winning an International Emmy award.

OKLAHOMA! marked the beginning of Rodgers & Hammerstein's partnership, the legendary team who went on to create Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I and The Sound of Music. Featuring such well-known songs as "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin," "The Surrey with a Fringe on Top" and "I Can't Say No." OKLAHOMA! changed the face of stage musicals by telling an emotional story through music, lyrics and dance as never before.

"There is such truth in this production that I don't want to see another. I want the entire world to see it. It's got plenty of laughs, but it is also deeply touching."- Mary Rodgers, daughter of the late Richard Rodgers
Showtimes for this special cinema event are Saturday, July 7 at 7pm and Sunday, July 8 at 2pm.

Tickets for OKLAHOMA! are $15 each. A discounted ticket of $13 is available for seniors, active military, students, and teachers. Group sales and private screening parties are also available.

More program and schedule information, as well as ticket purchases, can be found at RiverSt.org or by calling the RST Box Office [phone]. The after hours box office can be reached by calling OvationTix at [phone].

The River Street Theatre is located in downtown Jaffrey, New Hampshire at 6 River Street. The River Street Theatre is sponsored by Grove Street Fiduciary, Coca-Cola, the Board of Trustees of the Park Theatre, Janet S. Grant, Betty Locke, Owen Houghton and the James F. & Fernande Kelly Charitable Trust.

I wonder if Trevor Nunn knows that his filmed production of Oklahoma! will now be shown on the big screen?

From stage to the small screen ( via BluRay or TV screening) to the big screen!


And will this lead to more cinema screenings for this landmark American musical?




Jo

[jo]

Just came across this detailed account by the R&H Organization of the filming of the stage musical.

www.rnh.com/news/790/Spellbinding-Oklahoma-Comes-To-The-Home-Screen


Sorry, can't reproduce the article.

Jo

[jo]

NYTimes theatre critic Ben Brantley compares the two stagings of OKLAHOMA!, obviously having seen the productions in London and on Broadway --

www.nytimes.com/2002/03/22/movies/theater-review-this-time-a-beautiful-mornin-with-a-dark-side.html

Excerpts --

Watching the sparking country couples dance their way through a roof-raising number like ''The Farmer and the Cowman,'' you feel a wild, procreative energy that, properly channeled, could indeed build a city or two in record time. You are also at least subliminally aware that the same force could fast turn into an equally potent weapon of destruction.


This was the sensibility that made an old show seem newborn when Mr. Nunn and Ms. Stroman first staged their ''Oklahoma!'' four years ago in London at the Royal National Theater, where Mr. Nunn was the newly appointed artistic director. You had that privileged belief that you were experiencing something like the same excitement that audiences must have felt when this groundbreaking show first opened in 1943.

That level of excitement, I must reluctantly confess, has lowered in this latest version. Mr. Nunn had hoped to bring his London cast with him to New York, a plan thwarted by the American Actors' Equity Association.

Working with a mostly new ensemble (only two original performers remain), he and Ms. Stroman have yet to achieve the same compelling fluidity or galvanizing sexual charge.

The show retains considerable charm. Rodgers's music is, again, ravishingly played, in ways that bring out darker undercurrents in what is generally remembered as a sunny score.

And Anthony Ward's harmoniously curved set, in which the sky seems to stretch into eternity, again pulses with the promise of a land on the verge of transformation. But audiences who didn't see the London version may wonder what the fuss was about.

The dance sequences provide a clue, as does the riveting performance by Shuler Hensley (who appeared in London) as Jud, the homicidal hired hand. But this ''Oklahoma!,'' while eminently agreeable, is only occasionally transporting.

In London, you understood why show-business historians invariably use the word organic in describing the impact of ''Oklahoma!'' when it first opened. (By organic, what's meant is that song and dance seem to arise naturally from the plot and to advance it, rather than serving as happy diversions.) Song seemed as natural as conversation; dance, as inevitable and essential as breathing.

The New York production, which still feels underrehearsed, doesn't have that seamlessness. There's a forced quality in the air that comes from performers who have yet to melt fully into their characters.

The comic dialogue is often exasperatingly rendered in vaudevillian broad strokes. And in the romantic leads, Patrick Wilson (late of ''The Full Monty'') and Josefina Gabrielle, in a reprise of her London role, seem more like amiable kissin' cousins than erotic soulmates.

In dance, however, ''Oklahoma!'' truly finds its feet, expressing the bold intelligence behind this revival. Ms. Stroman, whose tirelessly inventive stagecraft can also be seen in ''The Producers'' and ''Contact,'' daringly chose not to recreate Agnes de Mille's fabled choreography. Yet her work here surely comes closer to capturing the eye-opening vitality of de Mille's original dances than the usual dutiful imitations.

For Ms. Stroman's choreography vibrates with the sense of sensual restlessness in search of an outlet, touchingly offset by a youthful lack of confidence as to how to proceed. As she demonstrated in her long-running ''Contact,'' Ms. Stroman knows how to shape smooth kinetic poetry from rough-edged characters and to sketch individual personalities within an ensemble through dance.

There's an appealingly self-conscious air about both songs, a sense of wide-eyed romantic experimentation, as men dance sheepishly with other men, and women, more matter-of-factly, dance with women. When the two sexes converge in the terrific second-act opener, ''The Farmer and the Cowman,'' there's a heady, giddy electricity that seems always on the verge of sliding out of control, possibly into violence.

No character is more uncomfortably aware of this danger than Ms. Gabrielle's Laurey, first seen as an overalls-wearing tomboy who is clearly doing her best to avoid growing up. She may love the cocky Curly (Mr. Wilson), who doesn't quite know how to approach her, but she is fascinated by the surly, brutish Jud, who works for her Aunt Eller (Andrea Martin).

With her angular elegance and cool poise, Ms. Gabrielle is not a natural Laurey. A former soloist with the National Ballet of Portugal, she is a delicately expressive dancer, which is particularly evident in the dream ballet sequence, in which -- as stunningly reconceived by Ms. Stroman -- Laurey does her own dancing. (Traditionally, there is a dream alter ego.)

As an actress, she efficiently sends all the signals meant to convey Laurey's sexual ambivalence, but the performance never feels effortless. This was less obvious in London, where Curly was played by Hugh Jackman, who was just beginning his fast rise to movie stardom and who oozed a feverish virility that took the chill off Ms. Gabrielle's Laurey.

Indeed, one of the revelations of the London production was that Curly and Jud came across as flip sides of the same masculine force. Mr. Wilson doesn't begin to project the same insolence. His Curly is sweeter, more self-effacing, and it's impossible not to like him. But he doesn't have the power, of presence or voice, to carry off either Curly's desperate acts of impulse or his mood-setting solos.

Ms. Martin, best known as a comedian, is a surprisingly restrained and dignified Aunt Eller, with a couple of genuinely moving moments (as when she anxiously watches Laurey open a present from her). Mr. Bohon and Jessica Boevers, both performers of fresh-faced piquancy, haven't yet fully defined Will and Ado Annie. And Aasif Mandvi edges tediously into caricature as Ali Hakim, the Persian peddler.

Mr. Hensley, however, brings unsettling depth to a part more often tossed off as a glowering conventional villain. His resonant baritone conveys myriad shades of longing, despair and anger, turning (of all things) ''Lonely Room,'' Jud's solo, into the evening's must memorable musical moment.

In fact, this Jud is such a completely and complexly realized character that he threatens to become the show's center. The friend who accompanied me to ''Oklahoma!'' said that he felt sorry for Jud at the end and that Jud probably should have wound up with Laurey, which was surely not Rodgers and Hammerstein's intention.

Broadway missed out on the casting of Hugh Jackman as Curly, including the chance to see how his Curly faced off with Shuler's Jud more impressively. The filmed production gives audiences a chance to see that dramatic tit-for-tat as well as the strong erotic pull between Curly and Laurey...and the humorous level of exchanges between Curly and Aunt Eller!

JO

[jo]

The filmed stage production is getting a second life -- as a summer offering. There have been a few social media announcements of screenings, such as this --

Not surprised, too, at this time of year (4th of July week) as OKLAHOMA! is the landmark American musical. The themes and characters are fictionalized representations of the pioneering spirit of the past.

Plus, the recent success of THE GREATEST SHOWMAN may have also whetted the appetite for more movie musicals as entertainment fare.


Jo

[jo]

Hugh could not make it, but the cast of the RNT Oklahoma! had a reunion and shared the photos with him --

[jo]

Reprising the title song at their 20th anniversary reunion of the staging of OKLAHOMA! at the RNT London.

I think Josefina (Laurey) is the one with the orange top, Maureen Lipman ( Aunt Eller) is wearing black with printed panel, and Peter Polycarpou ( The Peddler) is wearing a light grey shirt. Too bad Hugh could not be there with them.


And --

Jo

[jo]

Can you guess the others -- if compared with the finale song performers

[jo]

Matt Wolf, famed British critic then writing for Variety ( and International Herald Tribune, now NYTimes international edition) -- wrote this review of the Royal National Theatre production of OKLAHOMA!

variety.com/1998/legit/reviews/oklahoma-2-1200454383/

HOME Legit Reviews
July 20, 1998 12:00AM PT

Oklahoma!
In 1992 at the Royal National Theater, Nicholas Hytner reclaimed "Carousel" as a tale of almost unbearable sorrow and wisdom allied to a score whose pleasures just wouldn't quit. Trevor Nunn, in his musical debut at the National, makes a nearly comparable case for Rodgers & Hammerstein's more popular "Oklahoma!."

By Matt Wolf

In 1992 at the Royal National Theater, Nicholas Hytner reclaimed “Carousel” as a tale of almost unbearable sorrow and wisdom allied to a score whose pleasures just wouldn’t quit. Trevor Nunn, in his musical debut at the National, makes a nearly comparable case for Rodgers & Hammerstein’s more popular — though perhaps less probing — “Oklahoma!,” written two years prior to “Carousel.” Nunn’s achievement is such that he need put no particular spin on a 1943 American warhorse that the National’s tourist contingent will no doubt know by heart. Instead, he simply applies the rigorous attention to text that has marked all his best work and leaves the rest to some astonishing American collaborators — the choreographer Susan Stroman and a sensational, operatically trained newcomer named Shuler Hensley chief among them.


If you never thought the romantic triangle among Curly (Hugh Jackman), Laurey (Josefina Gabrielle) and Jud Fry (Hensley) could at various times recall “Much Ado About Nothing,” “Peter Grimes” and even “Porgy and Bess,” it’s because few production of this musical bear the imprint of a director of Nunn’s experience. Perhaps it takes someone of Nunn’s seasoning to treat a potentially folksy show head on, without patronizing the material or the audience.
Whatever the reason, the thrills of the evening are inextricably linked to the abiding truthfulness of it. This remains the most rousing and optimistic of shows, but I’ve never before seen an “Oklahoma!” where the rexuberance of that exclamation point seemed so hard-won.

The production veers toward tragedy from the entrance of Hensley’s brooding, begrimed farmhand Jud, whose glowering countenance acknowledges few of the “beautiful mornin’s” of which his rival, Jackman’s open-faced cowboy Curly, is forever singing. It’s easy to dismiss Jud as a hulking simpleton with, as is remarked of him, “a heart as big as all outdoors.”

But glimpsed in his cramped home poring over pictures of women when he hungers for the real thing, this Jud bears more than a trace of Benjamin Britten’s anguished, repressed Grimes, coupled with the thwarted nobility of spirit that could be said to define the Porgy of Gershwin’s masterwork that preceded Rodgers & Hammerstein’s by eight years. (It helps that the production restores Jud’s defining solo, “Lonely Room.”)

In an English theater debut audiences will be talking about for years, Hensley plays every moment of Jud’s “crawlin’ and festerin’ ” existence as if his life depended on it, which, of course, it does. This is a man left out of the pioneering America that Hammerstein’s libretto celebrates, who looks as if he might be more at home in that other Oklahoma-set (at least partly) classic, “The Grapes of Wrath.” Jud’s specific bad luck is to have comically paraded in front of him a funeral — in a deliciously performed “Poor Jud Is Daid” — that he will end up cruelly undergoing well before time.


And yet, death must be a release for someone who cries, “I can’t help it; I can’t never rest,” even as the rest of the community is surrendering to the idyll of a box social. Among other things, his fate suggests the indebtedness of the story to that favorite English topic, class, when Jud spits out a resentful, “You better, you so much better.”
No one in the cast betters Hensley, though it’s hard to imagine a more immediately charming Curly than Jackman, an Australian performer inheriting a role that in lesser hands can seem oddly smarmy: He’s as pliable, the staging suggests, as Jud is rigidly doomed, and Jackman makes an appealing (and beautifully sung) case for a man who won’t be left behind by the winds of change in “this here crazy country.”

There’s a trace of Benedick and Beatrice to his defensive banter with Gabrielle’s Laurey, a woman beset by indecision who — the production suggests — needs to achieve the same personal self-definition that will mark the Indian territory itself as it slides into statehood.

Though she has a pleasant enough (if somewhat syrupy) voice, Gabrielle is primarily a dancer. So it’s little surprise that a somewhat inexpressive performance takes wing in the dance numbers. The ballet that closes the first act replaces Agnes de Mille’s historic contribution with a vintage piece of signature Stroman that begins with hands poking out from behind a field of corn to lure Laurey into a dream-cum-nightmare danced by the three principals, not their traditional alternate fantasy selves.

Elsewhere, Stroman allows Jimmy Johnston’s bubbly Will Parker to lasso the audience’s affections (and himself) during “Kansas City,” while second-act opener, “The Farmer and the Cowman,” makes a dizzying whole out of a land that, the song reminds us, for all its freedom contains no lack of fences.

It’s that suggestion of divisiveness — of the darkness beyond the turquoise front curtain and mammoth blue sky of Anthony Ward’s typically elegant, clean sets — that shadows this “Oklahoma!,” even as one is moved by librettist Hammerstein’s generosity towards all his characters, including an Aunt Eller (gamely played by a miscast Maureen Lipman) far less starchy than she first appears. (Peter Polycarpou’s itinerant peddler, Ali Hakim, turns out to be a fast-talking mensch.)

Is that to freight “Oklahoma!” with more reality than it can bear? Not at all. It’s just that in a show about dreamers, Nunn has done what no one dared dream, paying equal homage to the great outdoors and — in the rapturous world of Rodgers & Hammerstein — to that even greater heart that most of us keep locked within.