Oklahoma! at Bard SummerScape

Most Jade Sphinx readers will have seen the film version of Oklahoma! or, perhaps, a Broadway revival or regional production.  Oklahoma! is not only a classic Broadway musical, it is perhaps the key musical, in that it was the first to incorporate song and dance into the story arc.  Prior to Oklahoma!, the plot of musicals went on hold while songs took center stage; it took the genius of Richard Rodgers (1902-1979) and Oscar Hammerstein II (1895-1960) to realize that music and dance are also a form of narrative.

So it was with great interest that Your Correspondent saw the new, much-lauded revival at Bard SummerScape, on view till July 19.  Most people remember Oklahoma! as one of the sunniest of musicals, and most people would be in for a surprise with this production which is being touted as gritty and darker.  For Your Correspondent this would normally mean stay away.  But though there is a great deal here to offend purists, it is a worthy and thought-provoking production that is not to be missed.  The change in tone succeeds in making Oklahoma! a more thought-provoking than toe-tapping experience, and patrons leave discussing motivation rather than just humming familiar standards.

Directed by Daniel Fish, Oklahoma! is staged in the round, with the audience seated at long deal tables in a room decorated for the show’s  closing neighborhood social.  (Chili and lemonade are served during intermission!)  The score – usually lush and orchestral – is strategically reduced to a country band to increase regional flavor.  And Curley, played winningly by Damon Daunno, often accompanies himself on guitar to smart effect.  (This also helps the real deficiency in his singing – Daunno has a charming lilt to his voice, but the demands of the show are beyond his talents as a vocalist.)  Daunno is perhaps too insinuating a leading man, with an extremely lanky frame that seems to slide into each scene rather than dominate it.  We expect good things from him in the future, and he is suited to the darker reimagining of the show, but somehow he never completely convinces.

A bigger disappointment is Amber Gray as the heroine, Laurey.  Gray is a spare and astringent presence, and her Laurey strives to be powerful and independent, and comes off merely as strident and sullen.  Gray, fortunately, has an impressive voice and sings her songs effectively.

Several of the performers, however, are everything one could wish for, and more.  Ado Annie – often depicted as a coy vixen – here is reimagined as a backwoods slut by actress Allison Strong.  Her brazen sensuality while singing I Can’t Say No! leaves nothing to the imagination, and she has a wanton heat that adds considerable sizzle to the proceedings.  She is evenly matched by the delightful James Patrick Davis as Will Parker, who makes hay with an exuberant rendition of Kansas City, and plays with energy and panache.  Benj Mirman as peddler Ali Hakim (always our favorite character in the show) is a pleasing presence, with an understated handsomeness that contrasts well with the all-American he-men surrounding him.  And though not a singing role per se, he has a pleasing baritone and an easy stage presence; we would happily see him again.

Other players, such as Mitch Tebo as Andrew Carnes and Mary Testa as an unusually slatternly Aunt Eller, also appoint themselves successfully.

However, the real revelation of the evening is Patrick Vaill as the villain of the piece, Jud Fry.  A brooding, sullen presence filled with quiet menace and a palpable, latent sense of evil, Vaill nearly walks away with the production in a scene played, surprisingly, completely in the dark.  When Curley comes to Jud’s room to learn more about him, director Fish blackens the stage, recording the conversation between the two with an infra-red camera and flashing the results on the wall monitor.  The effect is unsettling, creepy and other-worldly, and with his listless eyes and slack carriage, Vaill is a spectacular boogeyman.  He is an actor who will deliver great things in the future.

However, poor Jud’s death at the end of the play is more execution than self-defense: an out-of-context anti-NRA commercial that completely up-ends the normally happy ending of the show.   In addition to the anti-gun message, we also get a battle of the sexes that may delight even today’s feminists.

These days, when we are given the paradoxical dark and gritty Superman, it is perhaps no wonder that Fish serves a light tuneful show as a more real-life dark vision of rural America.  The singing of the signature tune is oddly … defiant, and many of the choices may leave people with a history of the show scratching their heads in dismay.  But if you are adventurous, and want to see a daring, thoughtful and mostly-successful reimagining of a beloved piece of Americana, then the new Oklahoma! is for you.

Why a Duck?

I was at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College this weekend for the closing performance of David Eldridge’s new translation of Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck.  I am still suffering.

Considered by many to be the orphan child of Ibsen’s oeuvre, The Wild Duck (1885) is the story of Hjalmar Ekdal.  Hjalmar is the recipient of many kindnesses from Håkon Werle, who set him up in business and fostered the relationship and eventual marriage between Hjalmar and Gina, who was formerly a maid in the Werle household.  They have a daughter, Hedvig, who is going blind due to a congenital disease, and live with Old Ekdal, Hjalmar’s father.  Many years ago, Old Ekdal went to prison following a bad business deal with Håkon, who let the old man bear the full brunt of the law.

When Gregers, Håkon’s son, hears of all this, he is appalled.  An idealist, he breaks with his father, whom he sees as manipulative and deceitful, and moves in with the Ekdal family in an effort to get Hjalmar to open his eyes and see the reality of the situation.

However Hjalmar, Gina, Hedvig and Old Ekdal are already very happy.  While their lives may be built upon illusions, they are illusions that sustain and nurture them.  In the end, they are poisoned by Gregers’ rather selfish, hollow idealism, and the family falls apart.  Gregers also inspires Hedvig to shoot her pet duck to demonstrate her love for her father, but instead shoots herself to death.

In considering The Wild Duck, George Bernard Shaw wrote “you forget that you are in a theatre; to look on with horror and pity at a profound tragedy, shaking with laughter all the time at an irresistible comedy.”

One would be surprised in reading a synopsis of the play to find it a laugh riot, and that surprise would be justified.  Perhaps Shaw had a perverse sense of humor.  (Little girls shooting themselves are seldom the punch line of a good joke.)  Or, perhaps this translation by Eldridge is the real culprit.  In the notes Eldridge provides in the playbook, he writes, “here in 2011 we don’t often question whether it’s right to tell the truth, or ask at what cost to ourselves and others we tell the truth.  Modern life is a multiplicity of narratives that put our lives ‘out there.’  Whether on Facebook or on talk shows, in blogs or in newspaper columns, we constantly seem to be saying, This is who I really am and this is my authenticity.”  Translation: I cannot really understand historical context so instead here’s my take.

Eldridge does much to make the text more conversational and contemporary, but at the loss of Ibsen’s complexity and layered meaning.  Perhaps there are too many subtleties in the work for it to translate successfully – and perhaps it will always be Norwegian to me.

Total blame for this flat-footed, sluggish, exhausting disaster does not rest fully with Eldridge.  Director Caitriona McLaughlin makes one fatal misstep after another – starting with the party scene.  Done from the point of view of the party wait staff, one has the feeling she was pointing the proscenium in the wrong direction.  She also gives many of the waiters some low comedy business (one can only assume she owes the actors money) that makes little-to-no sense, and introduces some senseless modernizations that diminish focus from the text.  The one laugh she manages to muster involves a skinned rabbit – the equivalents of stooping to a rubber chicken.  Though the rabbit produces a laugh, it inspired most of the audience to entertain thoughts of an early dinner rather than of Northern European tragic-comedy.

Inter-scene music, provided by Ryan Rumery, was baleful.  Imagine discordant elevator muzak, but not quite as good, and you have some idea.  It’s not just that Rumery’s sound didn’t fit the play, it wouldn’t fit any play.

Performances were universally execrable.  Tom Bloom, as Håkon Werle, finds a single note and plays it throughout.  Mary Bacon, as Gina, seems more like a can-do sitcom mom (one expects her at any moment to warble One Day at a Time), bringing nothing to the role but a strong voice and a pert pair of hips.  Peter Maloney as Old Ekdal dithers nicely, but one had the impression of diminishing returns every time he entered the scene.

The most egregious offender of the cast, however, must be Dashiell Eaves as Gregers.  Granted it is a difficult part – by turns idealist and destroyer – but it seems completely out of Eaves’ grasp.  His voice is thin and his line readings strained.  He does, however, have a noticeable tattoo running from his collarbone up the side of his neck, and that remains his defining characteristic as an actor.

The Wild Duck seems out of place in the Ibsen canon.  Instead of lives ruined by lies and deception, here lives are ruined when happy fictions are stripped away.  It has long been an axiom of your correspondent that a little truth is a dangerous thing and that complete honesty is absolutely fatal.  This is an idea rich with irony and pathos – neither quality of which was on evidence at Bard.