Oklahoma Was Never Really O.K.

A new production exposes the darkness that’s always been at the heart of the musical—and the American experiment.

- Frank Rich

When those who want to make America great again wax nostalgic about the Great America they claim has vanished, what America are they picturing? If they grew up in the second half of the American Century and are white, that nostalgic cultural snapshot might be a Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post portrait of rosycheeked middle-class familial bliss, or Sheriff Andy and little Opie sauntering to the fishing hole in mythical Mayberry. But no pop-culture staple may more immediately conjure the bygone Great America than Oklahoma!, the Richard Rodgers– Oscar Hammerstein II musical that has been synonymous with sunny American nationalism for more than three-quarters of a century. The coruscating revival that debuts on Broadway this month, the fifth since the original production opened on March 31, 1943, is just one of the more than 300 new productions staged across the country in a typical year. Oklahoma! remains such an evergreen in the nation’s collective consciousness that even at its advanced age it can serve as both a springboard for parody in The Simpsons and a somber leitmotif in the premiere episode of Damon Lindelof’s HBO adaptation of the DC comic Watchmen, due later this year.