The corn is as high as an elephant’s eye
ONE of the pleasures of theatregoing is seeing a familiar work in a totally fresh light. You could hardly have a better example than Oklahoma!, which has triumphantly arrived at London’s Young Vic from New York. This 1943 musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein was once described by an American critic, Brooks Atkinson, as ‘a humorous idyll about attractive outdoor people’. In this production by Daniel Fish and Jordan Fein, it seems more like a mythic fable about a farming community’s expulsion of the unwanted outsider.
As we enter the Young Vic, we might be in a rustic barn, trestle tables, a seven-strong bluegrass group and guns adorning
