<em>Oklahoma!</em> Gets a Dark, Brilliant Remake
This article contains spoilers for the Daniel Fish production of Oklahoma!
In 1979, during the opening of a smash-hit revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, the New York Times drama critic Walter Kerr walked up the aisle at intermission and noticed that everyone in the audience was beaming. “Some were smiling because they remember,” he wrote. “The others were smiling because they will.”
I felt much the same way when I saw the latest Broadway incarnation of Oklahoma! at the Circle in the Square Theatre in New York City—an oval-shaped auditorium in which the action takes place on what might be the blond-wood floor of a gymnasium or a barn. The house is so brightly lit for much of the show that the smiling faces of audience members seated across from me were visible for most of the first act.
But after intermission, there were empty seats where some of
