Believe the hype. Daniel Fish’s radical staging of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Western musical from 1943 is utterly thrilling. Though the music is as gorgeous as ever, this version strips away many of the folksy, hokey accretions the show has acquired over the years and finds something much darker and more powerful.
It won a Tony on Broadway, and Evening Standard awards – for Fish and his then-co-director Jordan Fein, and for Patrick Vaill’s searing performance as Jud Fry – at the Young Vic last year. In New York they called it “sexy Oklahoma!”. A horrible phrase, but undeniably apt.
