R&H Oklahoma Revival Tour "Rejection" Article

I found this being discussed on All That Chat. The article was writing by Christopher Bannow, who played Jud Fry on the tour of Oklahoma. I know this split people on this board, but I thought it was an interesting read, considering it was from the perspective of someone in the cast. He talks about the "rejection" of the production on the road, and the experience of doing the show.

Link: "Surviving the States: Audience Rejection on the Road with Oklahoma!"

sortofpedantic said: "Always bums me out when people dislike something for the wrong reasons. Loved this on broadway, but catching the national tour was a huge disappointment simply because it didn't feel like any care was put into adapting the show for larger proscenium houses. I still think it could have worked if it had been a bit more thoughtful."

Yeah, I saw the tour at one of its earlier shows in Minneapolis and it was clear parts of the show weren't properly adapted for performance in a proscenium, and a lot of the audience I was with didn't seem to like it.

I enjoyed it, the performances especially (Sis as Ado Annie was a standout) but it definitely had its issues production-wise.

I thought the Circle in the Square production was fascinating in places and misguided in other places. I didn't see it on tour but I can imagine how it wouldn't play well in a less intimate, traditional proscenium setting. I can definitely see how that wouldn't translate on top of the average person in "flyover country" not realizing what they were getting into.

This production of Oklahoma! was probably the most daring, challenging, and out-there thing a huge majority of people in the tour houses had ever seen, so I'm not surprised they all hated it. It's a production that demands the audience already have a familiarity with how to re-read a popular text in a new light, which I'd argue most people are not able to do. This isn't a criticism of them, it's just a fact that there's not a lot of theatrical reimagining going on in these communities in the same way that there is on Broadway, so when you raise the curtain and blast the audience with something like this, of course they're going to scatter. If you can't speak the language, you're not going to be able to enter the conversation.

It also sounds like it wasn't sufficiently adapted as a touring production, which is bad enough on its own, let alone the way some shows crumble when taken from an intimate Broadway venue and plopped into something like the (good god) Benedum Centre in Pittsburgh, which has more than three times as many seats as the Circle in the Square.

Kind of an unfortunate show to tour. I would love for it to have been a wild success that introduced people to a new way of thinking about musicals, but I'm not sure how they could've worked it to be more successful in that regards without overhauling the entire thing.

ColorTheHours048 said: "I’ve noticed the cracks in my little home state’s Liberal facade; how Lil Rhody fosters much of the same small-town bigotry."

Hey, fellow Rhode Islander! Sadly, this is more on target than I would like to admit about our home state. If you ever wanna compare notes, I'm game.

We detested the concept of the show when we saw it at Circle in the Square, but at least we could love individual performances (Damon Daunno and Ali Stroker) and the band's music-making-- those guys were really superb. We were in no rush to revisit the tour here in LA, and for any of our friends getting tickets, we (nicely) alerted them to what they were in for. Nonetheless friends who went had a new criticism-- they hated how amateur the performance level was. It felt to them like a first read-thru of a community theater production.

So be careful not assume all those who hated the tour are regressive troglodytes craving their grandfather's Oklahoma. Could be they were just demanding good actors in the parts.

Alex Kulak2 said: "ColorTheHours048 said: "An interesting piece, and one I’ve been curious about since seeing the tour last March. I saw it in Providence, RI, the state I grew up in and one I’ve always considered mostly Liberal. This was my first production I was seeing in RI since the start of the pandemic, and it felt - immediately - like an eye-opening moment for me. I have never seen so many mid-show walkouts (brazen, loud walkouts) or such a mass exodus at intermission ever before. The audience around me felt actively angry at what they were watching. And ever since then, I’ve noticed the cracks in my little home state’s Liberal facade; the ways in which Lil Rhody actually fosters much of the same small town bigotry.

Now, I’m not saying by any means that Daniel Fish’s Oklahoma is a litmus test for Liberalism vs. Conservatism, but it is interesting to sit in an audience you think is primed for something different, and all they end up showing is that they’re unwilling or unable to change. It was palpable in the room, and it makes me sad to know those actors felt it too."

You're not alone. I'm in Chicago, about as liberal a liberal bubble as you can get, but if you could hear the conversations at the stage door during intermission (I got the worst of it, since I went on a matinee and saw it with an older crowd).

I loved the show, and I think there's some value in a show being this challenging and divisive. Of course it's fun when we all love a show and we all have a good time, but this is a musical that began it's life as an experimental, challenging piece of art that had never before been attempted on a stage. How many detractors did it have in 1943? I would bet the same percentage of detractors in 2022."

I don't see how this has to do with liberalism vs. conservatism, unless any rejection of any kind of change or reinvention is a form of conservatism--which seems an extreme position to me. I'll grant you Oklahoma! is a show more likely to bring in a traditional audience, and there's no way to know for sure the mindset of the people who rejected this production--or at least this production as it works on tour in larger venues--so you could well be right. But can't liberal audiences still evaluate a specific radical reinvention of a work and just find the choices for that production ineffective or unenjoyable? What was done for this iteration of the show was very extreme, much as was the case with the recent 1776 revival, and I think even a genuine liberal could watch either production and be turned off by it.

I saw the tour in San Francisco, one of the more progressive cities on the touring circuit.

Personally, I thought it was brilliant and was on my feet at curtain call. I saw the previous Broadway revival in the early 2000s, and even high school me thought something was "off" about the town's sense of justice. I loved the subversion, and the ending image will stay with me for a long time.

My husband wasn't familiar with the original, and was baffled that "Old Jud is Ded" is usually played for laughs. (That song is pretty disturbing when you think about it).

That being said, I can 100% see why it's so divisive. Several local friends (who are very progressive) just didn't find it to their taste. I knew from this board what I was getting into, whereas the advertising didn't make it clear. There were certainly plenty of confused-looking older folks in the audience!

The article is an interesting read, although it's a little self-important (and it could definitely have been edited for length).

I think that "deconstructed" versions of the classics can be great. But sometimes directors will make certain decisions that just come across like a gimmick with no real purpose.

The tour also could have done a better job of making it clear to audience members what they were getting into. I imagine it partly depended on the individual theaters in the various cities to do that, but I imagine that some audience members felt like this was kind of a "bait and switch." For example, if I paid $150 to see a new "reimagining" of The Phantom of the Opera, and the director made the "artistic choice" to have the actor playing the Phantom not wear any makeup for his disfigurement, and the whole thing is modern dress with new prog-metal orchestrations and I had walked in thinking I'd be seeing something at least somewhat similar to the original Broadway version, I'd be much less receptive than I would have been if I had at least known in advance. The only indication I saw widely available for this Oklahoma! tour that it was unusual was the critic pull-quote they used in the ads that said, "This isn't your grandmother's Oklahoma!," which, you know, is kinda vague (and in this case, a major understatement).

Having read this, I can't even imagine what the reception to the revival of "1776" has been on tour. Personally while I loved "Oklahoma!" and saw it at St Anns and CITS, I really loathed and detested Roundabouts "1776"

Apart from critics, Has there been any feedback on how its being received on tour?

I saw this revival and CITS and loved it, and I went to revisit on tour in Nashville and loved it all over again. I thought the cast was phenomenal and had no qualms in the talent department. Everyone in my group of four was new to the staging except for me, and I gave them warning beforehand. We all walked out liking it, even if some of their perplexed-ness evened out though discussion. I attended a Saturday matinee (Nashville only had the show Tues-Sun), and the audience was small at the start of the show, but for the most part retained a good number post-intermission. There was a teenage girl next to us on her own who was invested and reactive throughout, she was really enjoying how radically staged and framed the show was.

The Broadway cast was much stronger and sold the chemistry needed to execute Fish’s vision. We can go back and forth all day about the politics of the reimagining, but at the end of the day the promo videos is what got me to but my ticket in NY. There’s also the fact that it was not conceived for large venues.