Opened July 12 at Balboa Park’s Starlight Bowl, Starlight Musical Theatre’s “Oklahoma!” is a grand reminder what American musicals used to be in the Good Old Days, when Rodgers and Hammerstein ruled the genre. The original ran for five years (1943-’48) on Broadway. It provides a valuable and reassuring trip down memory lane, especially on the heels of the 2004 Tony Award-winner, “Avenue Q,” which opened the night before at the Spreckels Theatre.
Despite the airplanes, to which scant stage attention was paid, the evening was quite enjoyable due to exemplary performances of Sarah Bermudez as the heroine, Laurey, Carly Nykanen as round-heeled “Girl Who Cain’t Say No” Ado Annie and Doug Bilitch as the peddler, Ali Hakim. Sweet-voiced Cory Bretsch provides an enjoyable performances as Will Parker.
As Curly, Los Angeles-based singer R. Brodie Perry displays an operatic voice, pinched and unpleasant in part of its range and glorious on the top and bottom. He attacks each song’s opening phrase with over-clear diction and too much voice, as in “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'” and “The Surrey With the Fringe on Top.” One wants to throttle him and tell him to tone it down; this ain’t Bizet’s “Carmen.” When he’s not pushing, as in the duets “People Will Say We’re in Love” and “Pore Jud is Daid” with mellow-voiced Casey Marshall (Jud Fry) and Bermudez, respectively, the voice is purely ravishing. Add a little more virile swagger and a tad more facial involvement and he’d be an old-fashioned matinee idol.
Nykanen, an adorable Hope in Starlight’s stunning “Urinetown,” makes a perfect, physically adept Ado Annie, and with a letter-perfect accent and a minimum of overt ethnic stereotyping, the award-winning Bilitch (Officer Lockstock in “Urinetown”) is exemplary as the snake-oily Hakim, a role that sometimes makes one feel uncomfortable indeed.
Despite additional shortcomings “” among them the lackluster choreography by director David Brannen with an assist from Jack Tygett ” Starlight’s “Oklahoma!” will comfort and please traditionalists, even those who remember Agnes De Mille’s brilliant choreography. That’s what Starlight and Vista’s Moonlight Stage productions do, as a rule.
Not too surprisingly, “Avenue Q” addresses many of the same issues as “Oklahoma!” “” racism, sexual abandon and coming of age “” in a far different, 21st-century manner. Oklahoma territory is about to become a state, the cowman and the farmer are learning to co-exist, and it’s a hopeful world; whereas the denizens of Ave. Q struggle to find modern-day self-identity in an entirely different, less hopeful era. That was then; this is now.
“Oklahoma!” continues through July 22 at Starlight Bowl, Balboa Park. For tickets and information, visit www.starlighttheatre.org or call (619) 544-7827.
Next up are “Beauty and the Beast” Aug. 9-26 and the season’s most adventurous, the extraordinary 1998 Tony Award-winning Stephen Flaherty, Lyn Ahrens and Terrence McNally musical, “Ragtime,” Sept. 13-23.
Up north, where there is a decided lack of air traffic, Moonlight currently presents “Me and My Girl” through July 29; “West Side Story” Aug. 15-26; and “Little Shop of Horrors” Sept. 5-16. Visit www.moonlightstage.com or call (760) 724-2110 for information.
