“Oklahoma!” revolutionized American musical theater when it opened 60 years ago. It was the first musical to fully integrate a story – a sprawling epic of love and death set on the plains of the Oklahoma Territory – with music and dance.
But theater pundits saw a dud at the out-of-town performances. “No girls, no gags, no chance,” they said. After “Oklahoma!” opened in New York in March 1943, they changed their tune: “No girls, no gags, no tickets.”
“Oklahoma!” was a monster hit with a magical score, and a new community theater company has turned to this American classic for its inaugural production.
Northwest Civic Light Opera will present 11 performances of “Oklahoma!” opening tonight at the Stanwood Performing Arts Center.
It’s a true community theater production, with a cast of nearly 40 people drawn from Snohomish and Skagit counties ranging in age from elementary school children to adult performers.
The company’s co-founders are Brenda Mueller, music and stage director, and Robert MacNeal, artistic director.
Mueller is a noted soprano and teacher who has directed with Lighthouse Children’s Theatre and Village Theatre.
MacNeal is a classically trained baritone who retired to Camano Island after a long career that started in the 1950s when he landed a role in “The Merry Widow” in Los Angeles. It played six performances a week for nine months, made a bundle of money and jump-started MacNeal’s lifetime love of the theater as a performer, teacher and director whose career has taken him from Broadway to grand opera.
Now he’s working behind the scenes.
“It’s a monstrous undertaking,” said MacNeal, talking about the logistics of creating a new theater company from the ground up and presenting a very big Broadway musical as the first production.
MacNeal has been on a learning curve when it comes to such things as costumes, lighting and publicity, but he knows live theater and the things that can go wrong on stage.
Like the time he was singing the role of Curly the cowhand, in a touring production of “Oklahoma!” It was at a high school theater in Louisiana, where the set-up was so bad that to exit from one side of the stage and enter from the other, MacNeal had to walk outside the building and around the back.
This gave him an unexpected moment of drama when he got soaked in a rainstorm and arrived on stage, dripping wt, to sing “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin.’ “
That won’t be a problem at Stanwood High School’s modern performing arts center, but the play presented other challenges, MacNeal said.
One of them was casting the lead roles.
In this, MacNeal said he feels lucky to have secured some real talents. Among them is Sara Edmonds, a high school student from Mount Vernon who sings the role of Ado Annie – she’s the girl who “Can’t Say No.”
Another is Damara Hadzanga, who plays Laurey, the farmer’s daughter who is infatuated with Curly but accepts an invitation to the dance from the evil Jud Fry (Kurt Niemeyer), just to spite Curly.
At 17, Damara is just a year younger than Laurey, a plucky character who knows what she wants and sets out to get it.
“I think she’s smart,” said Damara, a Running Start student at Skagit Valley Community College who wants a theater career.
Laurey is a juicy part for a soaring soprano such as Damara, who sings some of the show’s loveliest songs, including “Many a New Day” and the show-stopping “People Will Say We’re in Love” with co-star Chris Graves, who plays Curly.
“There are a lot of young kids in the show,” Graves said. “I was frankly shocked when I saw and heard what these kids are capable of. These kids are pros.”
Graves attended college on a vocal scholarship. Classically trained, he worked full time as a musician and actor, playing jazz, funk and disco, acting and doing commercial work.
Eventually he began a sales career, but found he missed the theater once he landed the role of Curly, a part he played a decade ago with a theater company in Cincinnati.
“I had forgotten how much I had enjoyed musical theater. I really have found what I love,” he said.
He likes playing the cowboy Curly, the eternal optimist, “the all-American happy-go-lucky guy who falls into a pile of manure and comes up smelling like a rose.”
Graves loves singing the Rodgers and Hammerstein songs – “the perfect mesh of melody and lyrics” – because they are beautiful and because they challenge him as a singer.
There’s “Surrey with the Fringe on Top,” with its long line of lyrics that demands expert breath control so nothing is forced or strained.
And then there’s the show-opening “Oh What a Beautiful Morning’.”
“It’s a singer’s song, one you can sink your teeth into,” Graves said. “For me, it sets up the whole evening.”
The Village Photographers photo
Chris Graves and Damara Hadzanga star as Curly and Laurey in “Oklahoma!”
“Oklahoma!”
A Northwest Civic Light Opera production tonight through July 3 at the Stanwood Performing Arts Center at Stanwood High School, 7400 272nd St. NW, Stanwood. Performances at 7 p.m. Friday through Sunday, 2 p.m. matinee Sunday. There’s also a performance at 7 p.m. Thursday, June 24. Tickets, $8 to $15, 360-629-4721 and at the door. Information, www.nwciviclightopera.org.
“Oklahoma!”
A Northwest Civic Light Opera production at 7 p.m. Friday through Sunday, 2 p.m. matinee Sunday, tonight through July 3 at the Stanwood Performing Arts Center at Stanwood High School, 7400 272nd St. NW, Stanwood. There’s also a performance at 7 p.m. Thursday, June 24. Tickets, $8 to $15, 360-629-4721 and at the door; www.nwciviclightopera.org.
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