Oklahoma! (Broadway) NYC Reviews and Tickets

"Fish’s wide-awake, jolting and altogether wonderful production...Such a metamorphosis has been realized with scarcely a changed word of Oscar Hammerstein II’s original book...A cozy old friend starts to seem like a figure of disturbing — and exciting — depth and complexity...It was an exciting work from the get-go, but it just keeps getting better. The performances are looser and bigger; they’re Broadway-size now, with all the infectious exuberance you expect from a great musical."
Read more

"Fish’s fascinating and unsettling reimagination...has moved to Broadway, with its immediacy, strangeness and eerie sense of danger intact...Seeing the production a second time allows one to appreciate not only the striking darkness that Fish and company have teased out of the material, but also the light they shine on small details. It's thrilling to see a Broadway classic rise to the challenge of so modern a conception. ‘Oklahoma!’ it remains, but there's nothing corny about it."
Read more

"On my second visit to its cornfields, I was struck not only by the production’s menace but by its joy. This 'Oklahoma!' is no stuffy academic revisionist exercise — it’s a theatrical blow-out...The production has gotten fuller, freer, and funnier in its Broadway transfer...I respect a musical that gives me extraordinary performances, gorgeously reimagined songs, a piercing allegory of the American experiment in all its vigor and its brutality, and a cast that knows what they’re working with."
Read more

"A bold reimagining of a familiar work can deliver an altogether different and far more startling thrill, bringing out unexpected textures and exposing previously subterranean thematic seams...For audiences open to experiencing 'Oklahoma!' from a fresh perspective, director Daniel Fish's probing revamp will be a revelation...Even more impressive though is the fact that it remains such bracing entertainment, compromising neither the drama nor the comedy."
Read more

"A crazily experimental theatrical experience...But this revival of ‘Oklahoma!’ happens to be terrific fun, too...The ensemble’s interactions are casual, loose, wiry, and scrappy, with an energetic sense of anticipation, and their singing, while full-throated, can also be raw...When director Fish’s inventively eccentric notions and Rodger and Hammerstein’s confident showmanship completely fuse, you stop fretting about incongruities — the effect is magical."
Read more

"The audience is just a pounding heartbeat away...The wonder of this production is that so much of the joy and optimism of the original work still shines bright through the darkness...Fish exposes those sexual passions that are kept firmly repressed in traditional productions...The only failure with this let-it-all-hang-out directorial style is the Dream Ballet, which is supposed to hint delicately of the lovers’ yearnings but is here allowed to go on ad nauseam."
Read more

"Hammerstein’s large-spirited, all-American optimism is dismissed with contemptuous irony as a tool of the patriarchy at its most violently oppressive..Is there anything good about this production? Absolutely. For openers, Ali Stroker...Mr. Fish’s 'Oklahoma!' is a travesty, a sneering burlesque of the most influential and beloved Broadway musical of the 20th century. If the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization had any self-respect, it would shut the whole thing down."
Read more

"Cheapened and vulgarized...Designed to appeal to kids who have never heard of ‘Oklahoma!’ and ignorant ticket buyers who hate musicals in general and avoid anything categorized as ‘old-fashioned’ in particular...Everything that can go wrong in a lunkheaded misguided musical actually manages to do so...There is evidence that the cast can sing, but everything has been done by director Daniel Fish to disguise the fact."
Read more