Oklahoma! – Wyndham’s Theatre, London

Book and Lyrics: Oscar Hammerstein II

Music: Richard Rodgers

Director: Daniel Fish

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s work has been transformed in recent years with a spate of darker, more complex interpretations that bring fresh perspective to shows that Hollywood made so innocent and romantic. But Oklahoma! is all about sex, certainly in Daniel Fish’s interpretation that came from Broadway to the Young Vic and now to the West End where his stark vision consumes all of the oxygen in the room and leaves you feeling a little soiled.

And what a revelatory feeling that is; theatre can make you happy, entertain you, even annoy you, but soiled? Hardly ever. And bring it on! This story of a box social and dance where the intricate love lives of its characters finally come to a head is a usually chipper affair, but with female characters refusing to commit, assaults, shotgun marriages and suicide themes, you’ll want to get home and scrub these people out of every pore, and what an arresting thing to feel after nearly three hours of performance.

Oklahoma! is sensational of course; it was brilliant in the round at the Young Vic and it is just as as horribly, wonderfully, magnetically compelling at the Wyndham’s. Now presented in proscenium arrangement, designers Lael Jellinek and Grace Laubacher have tried to build out into the audience as much as possible with an apron stage while bleached plywood has been plastered over the usually ornate circle boxes to act as rifle displays – it is as close to immersive as you can get in an old theatre and the performances do the rest, hauling you into this world and the lives of the townsfolk whether you like it or not.

Fish’s interpretation plays with your senses all the time, deciding what the audience can see, can’t see and only partially see using different lighting effects and colours created by Scott Zielinski that range from total blackout to lurid fantasy sequences in green or heightened emotional moments in burning red. An extraordinary scene ahead of the interval between hero Curly and Jud, his rival for Laurey’s heart, begins in total blackout with intensely performed dialogue spoken into booming microphones. The pair become slowly visible though the gloom, captured on a projected handheld camera, as intimate as lovers as they sing Pore Jud is Daid.

The cast relish the opportunity to play with this music, to elongate notes unexpectedly or toy with the register that brings a fresh interpretation to the score and gives it an organic feel, emerging from the scenarios and pressures of the moment. Arthur Darvill is particularly charismatic as Curly, rarely taking his eyes off Anoushka Lucas’s Laurey as the pair flirt and fight their palpable attraction to one another. But neither of them are necessarily good people, trying to destroy or torment others as a distraction, especially as Laurey, like all of the women in Oklahoma!, refuses to be tied down however devoted her suitors.

The supporting cast have a great time in the comic roles including Georgina Onuorah as a sexually voracious Ado Annie and James Patrick Davis as her not-so-smart lover Will, while Patrick Vaill is fragile and frightening in equal measure as Jud who manages to earn and lose audience sympathy across the evening, and it is the effects of Vaill’s performance that leaves that grubby stain as you leave the theatre.

Some may take or leave the dream ballet sequence at the start of Act Two, reimagined for the twenty-first century as a smoke-filled nightmare by John Heginbotham who across the piece creates choreography that doesn’t look like it has been choreographed. But it is interesting to see something so challenging in a West End theatre, a bold production that’s unafraid to look beneath the pretty surface of things to find the ugliness beneath.

Runs until 2 September 2023