Annie keeps “Oklahoma!” up to date

By John Moore | The Denver Post

PUBLISHED: July 18, 2005 at 9:22 AM MDT

Getting your player ready...

Something remarkable happens when Amy Board first sweeps onto the stage as Ado Annie in the Country Dinner Playhouse’s ambitious new production of “Oklahoma!” Actually, something remarkable happens every second this quirky young actor is on the stage. It’s hard to believe anyone could ever say no to this Ado Annie.

In its 1943 tryout period, “Oklahoma!” went by the title “Away We Go!” – and that’s how it feels from the first sound of Board’s sweetly affected voice. Every furrowed brow, facial tic, raised eyebrow and comic gasp is so well timed, you have to wonder if it’s all spontaneous, or has her routine been rehearsed down to the last, perfectly punctuated eyeball roll?

That you just can’t tell for certain is what makes Board’s extraordinarily natural breakout performance the highlight of an exuberant, though flawed, staging by guest director Joel Ferrell. If anything, the comic subplot between Board’s Ado Annie and Christopher Sergeeff’s Will Parker is so exhilarating, they make the more tepid coupling of hero Curly (Shane Peterman) and Laurey (Christine Paterson) seem downright ordinary. And in “Oklahoma!” ordinary just won’t do.

“Oklahoma!” was created to buoy the spirits of an America at war, but 62 years after it revolutionized the musical comedy, it’s awfully tough to get right. You can cast wonderful actors – and Ferrell does. Choreographers can do justice to its many dance numbers – and Alann E. Worley most certainly does.

But today, a great “Oklahoma!” is all about chemistry. And here, some things just don’t feel right. As Annie’s dimwitted suitor, Sergeeff is a fine singer and a better dancer. But Oscar Hammerstein II created Will for laughs. Sergeeff plays him with such aw-shucks sincerity, there is little to distinguish his Will from our straight-arrow protagonist, Curly.

Well, there are those gymnastic legs of his. Worley exploits them to such glory in “Everything’s Up to Date in Kansas City” that the show’s title song pales in comparison.

Sergeeff has charisma to spare, but Peterman is a bit lacking. Yes, his voice is golden. But despite Paterson’s best efforts, the couple generates little heat. And when it comes to Curly’s playful sparring with antagonist Jud Fry, he’s adrift.

Anyone who has seen the PBS broadcast of Trevor Nunn’s 1999 London revival knows that its achievement was its emotional complexity. It brought a real sense of seduction to the courtship of Curly and Laurey, and an identifiable creepiness to Jud, the hired hand who obsesses over Laurey. This re-examination was true to Hammerstein’s vision of always creating characters – good and bad – with an essential humanity.

Ferrell’s staging feels like an amalgam of old and new. There’s no attempt to bring any sensuousness to the love story, but in casting the fine-voiced Craig Lundquist, Ferrell brings us a more three-dimensional, dark and more interesting Jud.

But in a crucial early scene, in which the roles of hero and villain are tantalizingly blurred, Peterman is an actor without a director. Curly preys on Jud’s stupidity and loneliness by seducing him with the idea that he would be loved in death more than he ever was in life. It’s a sadly appealing prospect to a desperate loner, and you must believe Curly really would allow Jud to put his head in a noose and jump.

The only way a protagonist can pull that off is to be a rascal with such power of persuasion, the audience will hate what he is doing without hating him. “Poor Jud is Dead” should make you laugh, and then feel ashamed for doing so. Peterman simply plays the scene straight, making his Curly not so much mischievous as a dull jerk. That robs the excellent Lundquist of his character’s deserved empathy, and the scene falls flat.

This “Oklahoma!” also will be remembered for Michelle Sergeeff and Robert Hoppe’s dancing in the deeply psychological dream ballet, the wonderful earth mother Deborah Curtis as Aunt Eller, John Arp’s comic ambivalence as Annie’s father and Marcus Waterman as a precise peddler Ali Hakim, through the actor takes the character’s thick Persian accent so seriously, it’s often difficult to make out his words.

More than 60 years after its creation, maybe the most remarkable thing about “Oklahoma!” is how compelling and thought-provoking it still can be.

Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-820-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.

“Oklahoma!”
***

��ap