Reviving a classic
Modern perspectives bring new life to ‘Oklahoma!’ at Goodspeed
Reviving an American classic isn’t always the easiest of tasks. But for director Jenn Thompson, bringing new life to the classic “Oklahoma!” at the Goodspeed Opera House has been as much about about establishing a modern perspective as it has been about good acting.
“Revivals are seen through the lens of their time — how you feel about ‘Oklahoma!’ today is not how you would have thought about it years prior. If we did it last summer, for example, it would have felt different because there is a different urgency and a different feeling on what it means to be American right now, and I’m exploring that feeling through this play,” she says.
Set in 1906, “Oklahoma!” tells the story of Curly and Laurey, a couple resistant to falling in love. It’s also the story of a community trying to establish itself in unchartered Native American territory, more commonly known as the Wild West. Written and presented to the nation in the midst of World War II, having opened on Broadway in 1943, the show is also a story that explores the ideas of what community means in America.
For Thompson, those themes are still very relevant today. “It was written during a very difficult time of uncertainty,” she says. “And, in a way, we are experiencing that now in the present.”
“Oklahoma!” has gone down in theater history as the musical that marked the beginning of the renowned collaboration between Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein and is also known as one of the first musicals to combine singing and dance with more complex storylines.
And even though its semi-picture-perfect portrayal of life on the range may come across as “corn-fed, cheesy and old-fashioned to audiences today,” explains Thompson, its detailed character development was revolutionary for the time — an aspect that she says has kept the story interesting.
“It’s been about finding the right casting to make these complexities in the characters come alive. It’s been about taking a lot of time with the book and taking a lot of time with the actors. It’s about asking a lot of questions and having a lot of conversation with each other to make sure we are conveying the right emotions,” she says.
But for Thompson, the story’s ability to endure, even 75 years after it was written, comes down to the universal truths of growing up, feeling vulnerable and finding love. Those themes, Thompson says, are most highlighted
throughout the “Dream Ballet” performance and, naturally, that’s the part of the production where she decided to start as a director.
“Coming into this production, I knew that I would first need to take a focus on developing the ‘Dream Ballet,’ and the form that the dance would take from there would dictate the rest of the production,” Thompson says.
The “Dream Ballet” closes out the first act. It was originally titled “Laurey Makes Her Decision,” Thompson says, and has often been interpreted
as the moment in the musical when Laurey makes her choice between leading character Curly and the more sinister Jud. For Thompson, however, Laurey's decision was about something deeper.
“After reading the script, it was clear to me that Laurey had started the ballet as a girl and comes out of it as a woman,” she says. “It is the moment when Laurey is having a dream about those fears and desires associated with sexuality. She is grappling with whether she can make herself vulnerable to the person who she in love with in order to be with him. Those are major themes that we have working throughout the play.”
Aside from establishing Thompson's overarching vision for the musical, the “Dream Ballet” is a scene that has changed the most compared to past renditions of the show.
A new dance arrangement for the ballet, for example, was created by Broadway arranger David Chase for this specific production, Thompson says.
“And what instantly makes that dance, if not the entire show, different is the space that we have,” she says, referring to the small stage of the Goodspeed Opera House.
“It's a very intimate space, so to do a show that is usually done in a vast space puts a different opportunity to cast a different light on it throughout different parts,” she says. “The ‘Dream Ballet' has been one of those opportunities.”
Originally, to fit with the new dance arrangement, Thomson was looking for a Laurey that could dance. But as it turns out, Samantha Bruce, the actress cast to play Laurey, was not a classically trained dancer.
“She is lovely mover and is a huge part of the dream ballet but she is not a dancer dancer. The early concept for the ballet was that they (Laurey and Curly) would dance together,” Thompson says.
Bruce, who most recently played the role of Luisa in the last-ever off-Broadway performance of the long-running “The Fantasticks,” was cast alongside Rhett Guter, who plays Curly. Last summer, Guter performed the title role in the Goodspeed's production of “Bye Bye Birdie,” which was also directed by Thompson.
“The stuff that I've tried to tease out of the characters might be slightly different than what has been done in past renditions of the show. Often Curly can be played as a kind of square, vanilla, leading man, and one of the things that's so exciting about Rhett is that he is a gorgeous dancer — he dances in the ballet in a major way, which is not typical,” she says.
When it came to Bruce, however, it was her “awkward adolescent vulnerability” combined with a certain “toughness” that sold Thompson on casting her.
“She was something more complex than your standard ingénue, pretty girl. I knew that she was my Laurey, and for me, the acting is far more important than whether someone could dance or not,” she says. “I don't care how high someone can kick. If that's all that's motivating the show, then I am very uninterested.”
Getting the acting right has always been Thompson's top priority as a director, she says, and she has taken that as her main focus in making this production come together in a meaningful way — a way to tie in the universal hardships of growing into adulthood with the modern-day issues and concerns presently sweeping America.
“I think we have been able to capture these feelings, certainly in the hands of this cast who are a young, hungry, smart group of people and who have embraced the notion of digging a little deeper in order to make it a full-bodied experience for themselves,” she says.
“That's the miracle of revivals. It's highlighting the things that the team of creative people want to bring out.”