The star-laden concert My Favorite Things, held at London’s Theatre Royal Drury Lane on Tuesday, marked the 80th anniversary, earlier this year, of the Broadway premiere of Oklahoma! It was a ritzy affair devised as a tribute to Rodgers and Hammerstein and designed for devotees but will have done nothing to resolve the debate as to whether the famous duo’s work embodies, in the words of one critic, “theme-park Americana” or whether it revolutionised the US musical.
The format itself, with a parade of hit songs linked by the performers, now looks old-fashioned. After Daniel Fish’s mesmerisingly dark production of Oklahoma! ,with its bluegrass band, in London last year, it is difficult to go back to an unequivocally sunny rendering of its famous numbers with lush orchestration by Simon Lee. Although this production shrewdly includes the famous assault on racial bigotry, You’ve Got to Be Taught, from South Pacific, there is an unbridled romanticism to the show’s other songs when stripped of their dramatic context. Compared with the fizz and crackle of the Sondheim tribute, Old Friends, where each number resembles a one-act play, this evening seems like a collection of much-loved golden oldies.
