“It’s a Scandal! It’s an Outrage!”: An Introduction
In 2019, director Daniel Fish’s provocative staging of the classic American musical Oklahoma! opened at the Circle in the Square Theatre on Broadway. Staged in the round, Fish’s version challenged audiences where Oklahoma!’s March 1943 premiere on the St. James Theatre’s proscenium stage had delighted them. Then, most audiences were quickly captivated by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II’s musicalization of Lynn Riggs’ 1931 play, Green Grow the Lilacs. Like its source material, Oklahoma! roots its story in Indian Territory at the turn of the 20th-century as cowboy Curly courts farmgirl Laurey. Lemuel Ayers’ painted backdrops of blue skies, pure white clouds, and acres of rolling green hills reminded theatregoers of Americana, calming anxieties for many as the country found itself in the midst of World War II.
Over 75 years after its debut, Fish’s Oklahoma! departs from this mise-en-scène, discarding period costumes and scenery to transport the musical to present day. As described by New York Times theatre critic Ben Brantley, Laura Jellinek’s set suggested “a small town community center that might double as a polling station, decorated with festive banners, colored lights—and a full arsenal of guns on the walls.”1 Jellinek’s design returns audiences indoors, like Riggs’ play, and away from the outdoor space ascribed by Hammerstein to allow for “greater freedom of action and movement.2 This Oklahoma! insists upon intimacy as it takes audiences behind closed doors, confining both actor and audience member to present Oklahoma! “in a way that would invite audiences to watch this story about community in early 20th-century America and find reflections of communities in the United States today.”3 Clearly, Fish intended to push audiences to reconsider Oklahoma!’s relationship to its source material, its position within the musical theatre canon, and its parallels with the contemporary moment.
Circle in the Square’s inclination towards communal intimacy is at once implied by its three-quarter thrust stage and under 800-seat house but also embedded within its history.4 Founded in 1951, the Circle in the Square Theatre was initially housed in the West Village’s Sheridan Square. The venue’s status as a former nightclub complicated the company’s acquisition of a theatrical license. Instead, they procured a cabaret license, resulting in the company’s first production, Howard Richardson and William Berney’s Dark of the Moon (1951), serving “cookies and punch and set[ting] up cocktail tables in order for the show to go on.”5 Eating together establishes community with and amongst the audience, a practice Fish’s production echoed by serving cornbread and chili to audience members onstage during Oklahoma!’s intermission. Indeed, while Fish’s direction ensured a newfound degree of closeness toward the action of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s text, the space in which it was presented furthered its project.
At Circle in the Square, Jellinek’s immersive design enveloped the audience: house lights stayed on for much of the play’s duration, actors used stairwells for entrances and exits, and chili simmered in crock pots onstage during Act One to be served during intermission. Angela Sweigart-Gallagher and Aaron C. Thomas’ 2015 Theatre Topics article suggest that “dramaturgies of place” are the effects that “a specific location has on the shapes and rhythms of a theatrical performance.”6 I extend their thinking here to consider the relationship between theatrical house and stage, analyzing how dramaturgies of space work in tandem as one cohesive unit when considering an audience’s reception of a performance. Therefore, I argue here that the architecture of Circle in the Square accentuated Fish’s desires, enabling a particular kind of intimacy and engagement with the musical and its themes. This same intentionality was not and could not be replicated in the reconfigured staging for its 2021 national tour.
While Fish’s revival was generally critically acclaimed on Broadway and received the 2019 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical, its subsequent tour did not share a similar reception. In her January 2022 review of the Chicago tour stop, critic Heidy Weiss labeled the production, a “travesty of a mockery of a sham … [and] a warped and destructive version of its source.”7 I read this critique alongside other audience testimonies, ranging from the established critic to the amateur blogger to the casual theatregoer to certify that Weiss’ displeasure with Fish’s reimagining was not an isolated incident. In fact, Christopher Bannow, the actor who played the antagonistic Jud Fry on the tour, expanded upon these bad affects in a 2023 essay published on Howlround:
We had walkouts, of course, but also snickering, jeering, dumbfounded faces, searing reviews, refunds demanded, boos, audience members standing with both thumbs pointed down, vomiting in the balcony, sleeping, Facebook posts, Instagram messages, and emails.8
This article builds upon reception of the national tour at various tour stops, exploring reasoning for its poor reception after an objectively successful Broadway run. I consider the impact of changes made from Circle in the Square to the later proscenium staging necessitated by the national tour to demonstrate how the recalibrated dramaturgy of space weakened Fish’s interventions into Oklahoma!.
“Everything’s (not) Up to Date in [Minneapolis]: Oklahoma! Hits the Road
Before its Broadway run, Daniel Fish worked with students at Bard College to present the 1943 musical as a work of intimate dinner theatre, in 2007. When the production was restaged in 2015 at Bard’s SummerScape festival, it retained its intimacy, again seating audience members at picnic tables and serving cornbread and chili. Fish’s mise-en-scène was replicated at St. Ann’s Warehouse in 2018 for an Off-Broadway run, with Jesse Green of the New York Times praising the conceit: “…the whole thing feels much more intimate because of the context.”9 The production moved to the Circle in the Square in April 2019 where it continued to receive high praise from both critics and audience members alike. During the length of its run at the nearly 800-seat theater, Oklahoma! averaged an audience capacity of 93%. In May 2019, a national tour was announced, the first Broadway production of Oklahoma! to tour the U.S. since 1981, potentially the first opportunity most audiences had to experience its professional staging.10 The tour ultimately began performances in November 2021 after a COVID-19 pandemic postponement at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis instead of the previously announced Civic Center Music Hall in Oklahoma City.
In Minneapolis, local theatre blogger Alex Lauer titled his review: “Broadway’s Spellbinding Oklahoma! Is Dead on Arrival in Minneapolis.” A self-proclaimed fan of Daniel Fish’s reimagining, Lauer expressed his disappointment with changes made for the production’s tour, noting the loss of intimacy he felt on Broadway in the 2,600-seat Orpheum Theater:
The biggest failure is not a result of Fish’s avant-garde interpretation or the performance of the cast or seven-piece band. It was the sound, or lack of thereof. Sitting in the back row in the center of the main floor, I couldn’t hear half of the words uttered on stage, whether they were talking or singing, a problem that was immediately echoed at intermission by my six companions that night and, later, in comments online.11
The loss of sound, theorized Lauer, contributed to the collective negative reaction the production faced. While the hushed tones of actors onstage at Circle in the Square lent itself to the production’s dramaturgy, any attempt to replicate this in the massive Orpheum inherently resulted in a failure in auditory reception. In this scenario, the text itself is potentially the one tangible residue remaining for audiences who otherwise would find this Oklahoma! unrecognizable. These sound design errors make Fish’s staging alienating rather than intimate, even for the most well-intentioned audience members. Ironically, Bannow notes this very potential in his essay, as he echoes earlier sentiments from Fish, who suggested that national tours offer benefits to those outside of New York, “inviting more audiences into the conversation.”12 If, as Lauer suggests, the sound design of the tour denied such an entrance into the world of the play, no such conversation could occur.
Lauer continues to address changes to the dramaturgy of space in his review and, despite earlier shielding actors from any fault, still notes what he considered to be many parred down performances by actors: he brands actor Sean Grandillo’s “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’” as a “passing ditty”; accuses Hennessy Winkler and Benj Mirman’s Will Parker and Ali Hakim of leaving “silence in their wake”; and labeling Sis Thee Doll’s performance of “I Cain’t Say No” as evidence of the creative team’s decision to cut down choreography rather than expand it for a larger stage.13 For Lauer, the best parts of the tour were indeed holdovers from the Broadway production, including Gabrielle Hamilton’s solo Dream Ballet at the top of the second act as well as Bannow’s performance of “Lonely Room.” Still, these moments occur well after the musical’s point of attack when many audience members, like Lauer, have already cast their verdict on the production.
“All ‘er Nuthin’”: Disrupting Nostalgia in Pittsburgh
Less than three months afters its Minneapolis premiere, Oklahoma! arrived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in early January 2022 to play the 2,800-seat Benedum Center for a six-day run. Described as “bringing the best, award-winning Broadway shows to the historic Benedum Center,” the PNC Broadway in Pittsburgh series is part of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s annual line-up of arts offerings in downtown Pittsburgh. The series is programmed annually with a wide variety of shows; offerings range from new works in the American musical repertoire to revivals of classics. As part of the 2021-2022 season, Fish’s Oklahoma! joined a season that included the national tours of Hamilton (2015), Pretty Woman: The Musical (2018), and Summer: The Donna Summer Musical (2018), all relatively known properties due to previous commercial success and/or intellectual property. The decision to program Fish’s Oklahoma!’s for Pittsburgh’s season was likely predicated on a number of factors, including an assumed name recognition with Pittsburgh audiences.
In June 2019, the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera (colloquially referred to as the “CLO”) mounted a licensed production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical as part of their summer season, marking the companies’ eighth production of the musical in its 73-year history. For Pittsburghers, Oklahoma! holds an additional sentimental value: Shirley Jones, the Laurey in the1955 film adaptation, is claimed as a Pittsburgh native and returned to the musical as Aunt Eller in the 2007 CLO staging. The CLO, a nonprofit professional theatre company based in the Cultural District of downtown Pittsburgh, runs a majority of their productions out of the Benedum and, in the minds of casual local theatregoers, is often conflated with the PNC Broadway series. In a now archived page on their website, the CLO describes their production of Oklahoma! as the “classic version,” likely anticipating audience anxiety about whether or not the CLO would attempt a radical reimagining of their own.14 Earlier that same month, Fish’s Oklahoma! had performed on the CBS Tony Awards broadcast to audiences across the country. In her review of the CLO’s production for On Stage Pittsburgh, journalist Jade Goodes at once notes and assuages these anxieties, writing:
You may be familiar with the current production on Broadway that recently won Best Revival at the Tony Awards. The revival is set in modern day time and reflects the current state of our country. The CLO takes on the ‘classic’ production however, which is the more wildly known version of the musical. So while the CLO’s production may not be as dark or as gritty as the revival, they still make Oklahoma! an enjoyable experience and manage to bring a new life to the quintessential American musical.15
Goodes’ review praises the overall production, giving credit to Michael Schweikardt’s “classic” scenic design. Production photos featured on the CLO’s website support this claim, as Schweikardt and Haley Dee Tynes’ respective scenic and costume designs recall the aesthetic of the original 1943 production: women in vibrant, gingham dresses dance alongside men donning cowboy hats and boots against a backdrop consisting of a farm house and a wind pump. Seemingly conflating the text with its original production aesthetic, Goode nevertheless notes that it is this “classic” take that mediates a nostalgic read.
The return of Oklahoma! to Pittsburgh, less than 3 years after the CLO’s production spurred no such nostalgia. Ahead of the Pittsburgh tour stop, a feature story in the local Pittsburgh Post-Gazette interviewed Bannow for his take on Fish’s staging. The headline “Reimagined ‘Oklahoma!’ coming to Benedum” anticipated Bannow’s optimism about the musical’s potential to reach Pittsburgh audiences already familiar with the material. Once again, Bannow voiced his belief that the production had the potential to “jumpstart so many conversations about the interpretation.”16 A casual theatregoer like Melissa Karidis Fleming, however, felt uncertain about how to find her way into that conversation and clouded her reception of the musical. In a personal interview, Karidis Fleming reported that despite being seated within the first few rows of the Benedum’s orchestra section she felt disconnected from the action occurring onstage. Initially unaware of how the musical had previously been staged at Circle in the Square, Karidis Fleming was surprised to learn how the original three-quarter thrust allowed for intimacy between the performers and the audience and amongst audience members. With this insight, she hypothesized: “I think that would make a difference in how you view it […] If you’re seeing [others], it’s almost comforting. I don’t like feeling like it’s a lot and feeling alone.”17 The anxiety caused by the pronounced separation between stage and house informed Karidis Fleming’s decision to leave at intermission with her husband, stifling any potential for further engagement with Fish’s conversation.
“We Know We Belong to the Land [and Sea]: Oklahoma! and Once on this Island
While Fish’s Oklahoma! objectively took unprecedented liberties in its execution, it is not the first revival out of Circle in the Square to reconfigure its staging for a proscenium-style national tour. In 2019, Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens’ Once On This Island (1990) began touring after its Tony Award-winning run at Circle in the Square in 2017. Similar to Fish, director Michael Arden revisited his staging of Once On This Island ahead of the tour’s launch:
At each performance, there will be onstage seating, creating a unique experience within the footprint of every theatre we play […] Audiences will be invited to put their feet in the sand and surround our company, becoming part of the show. It’s our goal to give all audiences a unique perspective of the communal nature of what theatre can be…18
Arden’s sentiments echo Fish’s vision of Oklahoma!, drawing upon themes of community and highlighting the importance of one’s immersion into the story. In this way, Arden and Fish both demonstrate an understanding of the American musical’s tendency to depict the creation, maintenance, and/or disillusion of community, although choosing to manifest this understanding in different ways. For example, when translating to the proscenium stage standard in most US-touring houses, Arden strove to maintain the same sense of intimacy felt at Circle in the Square by allowing audience members to sit alongside actors. Fish does not repeat this from Broadway, opting instead for a traditional divide between stage and house.
While both Arden and Fish share the task of reimagining a canonical musical for a new cohort of audiences, it is Arden who possesses an advantage. Once On This Island, while achieving moderate success during its 1990 Broadway run,pales in comparison when competing with the cultural legacy associated with Oklahoma! It is more likely for audiences to have some recollection of Oklahoma! than Once On This Island, whether through licensed productions, the 1955 film adaptation, or even listening to the 1943 cast album—not to mention the countless school and community productions of the musical. These three examples recall Marvin Carlson’s concept of “ghosting,” which describes the expectations that audiences bring to a new reception experience on the basis of what they have seen before.”19 Audiences expect something reminiscent of Ayers’ frontier scenic design and not the domestic space that Jellinek offers. As of March 2025, Music Theatre International lists only 28 upcoming productions of Once On This Island whereas Concord Theatricals lists 73 upcoming for Oklahoma! The disparity in familiarization with these two shows is apparent, and without these preconceptions, audiences can view Arden’s production with fresh eyes; the same cannot be afforded for Fish’s Oklahoma! where there is greater chance for scandal and outrage.
“[It Doesn’t Have to Be a] Lonely Room”: A Conclusion
At the 2019 Tony Awards, the company of the Oklahoma! revival performed a medley of songs, beginning with Ali Stroker performing a cut of “I Cain’t Say No.” Stroker first appeared on the passeralle protruding from the Radio City Music Hall stage. Audience members sat on both sides of the passeralle, shifting their bodies to view her performance. When Stroker concluded her verse, she joined fellow company members on the stage as the medley segued to the show’s title song, “Oklahoma!” Seated along the upstage wall were audience members, likely pulled from the house of Radio City Music Hall. Actors split their engagement with the cameras, the audience in the house, and the audience onstage, fully immersing all spectators in their anthem. Despite the proscenium stage, Oklahoma!’s Tony Award performance still maintained the same sense of intimacy felt at Circle in the Square. It is worth noting that two years prior, the company of the Once On This Island revival performed on the same stage with a similar configuration, seating audience members around the company of actors onstage.
Like national tours, the Tony Awards present an opportunity for Broadway shows to reach audiences beyond New York City. For viewers outside of New York (like those in Minneapolis and Pittsburgh), it is possible that Oklahoma!’s Tony Award performance was the first time they may have seen or even heard of Fish’s radical reimagining; even the most decontextualized viewing had the potential to disrupt their vision of what the musical “should” be. The diversity on the stage was a clear departure from the 1943 production’s all-white, able-bodied cast, drawing attention to the “violence and white supremacy inherent in the play.”20 Numerous scholars, including Warren Hoffman and Charlotte M. Canning, have written extensively and critically about Oklahoma!’s portrayal of white identity. Hoffman considers the many fallacies in Hammerstein’s libretto, writing in The Great White Way that, “despite the musical’s frontier setting and the show’s thematics about land, farming, and the West, we never see or hear from a single Native American.”21 Canning notes in Theatre & The USA that “in the Oklahoma! version of national history, Manifest Destiny did not oppress Indigenous people, support slavery, or extend settler colonialism.”22 Instead, Indian Territory is reframed as belonging to the cowmen and farmers—implied to be exclusively the white settlers. For Fish, it is precisely the arguments presented here by Hoffman and Canning that is so integral to his production and the conversation he aims to invite audiences into.
The reappearance of Oklahoma! in the cultural zeitgeist following its inaugural production through later professional revivals as well as regional, educational, and amateur productions, facilitates the musical’s racial sedimentation. Scholar Josephine Lee’s defines racial sedimentation as the process of how, over time, performances of race do not replace one another, but are fused onto one another.23 Here, Oklahoma!’s overt absence of non-white bodies is silenced by its abundant performance of whiteness. Fish sought to crack open these expectations with his staging—and to an exciting degree, achieved this on Broadway. On the road, not so much—proving how significant the dramaturgy of space is to articulating a message. Rather than conjecture that the strong reactions from touring audiences are simply a matter of suburban communities not wishing to disrupt their nostalgic views of Oklahoma!, I offer that the more likely reason stems from breakdowns in the aesthetic realization of Fish’s directorial vision. Audiences’ affective responses instead gesture to the isolation one might feel in a large touring house such as the Orpheum or the Benedum.
Many, if not all, of Fish’s directorial choices register as immediate departures from traditional memories of Oklahoma!: butter churns, rolling hills, lush orchestrations, and so on. In 1943, this mythologized West presented an escape for its primarily white audiences: the idyllic depiction of a territory on the cusp of statehood and assimilation comforted audiences facing the fragility of national and global communities. In 2019, Fish allowed for no such escape, but he did offer care for audiences who entered the Circle in the Square Theatre: seating around and within the action with some cornbread and chili to share. On tour, this care seemingly vanished. As evidenced by cast member Christopher Bannow’s comments, the desire to hold a conversation about Oklahoma!’s relationship to Green Grow the Lilies, the 1943 original’s position within the repertoire, and the way both informed the 2019 political, racial, and cultural moment remained. But for audience members around the country, the jarring reimagination of a beloved musical can only inspire dialogue if they feel included in its newly imagined community.
- Ben Brantley. “Review: A Smashing ‘Oklahoma!’ Is Reborn in the Land of Id.” ↩︎
- Tim Carter. Oklahoma!: The Making of an American Musical. 88. ↩︎
- Christopher Bannow. “Surviving in the States: Audience Rejection on the Road with Oklahoma!.” ↩︎
- Multiple sources disclosed conflicting numbers for Circle in the Square’s seating capacity. This is likely due to the shifting nature of the theater’s configuration, which is contingent on the production playing. ↩︎
- Jennifer Ashley Tepper. The Untold Stories of Broadway Volume 2, 137. ↩︎
- Angela Sweigart-Gallagher and Aaron C. Thomas. “The Location’s the Thing: Endstation Theatre and Dramaturgies of Place,” 27. ↩︎
- Heidy Weiss. “National Touring Production of ‘Oklahoma!’ Wreaks Havoc on a Musical Theater Classic.” ↩︎
- Bannow, “Surviving in the States.” ↩︎
- Green, Jesse and Ben Brantley. “Review: There’s a Dark, Golden haze in This Reclaimed ‘Oklahoma!’” ↩︎
- Culwell-Block, Logan. “Oklahoma! Revival to Embark on National Tour.” ↩︎
- Lauer, Alex. “Review: Broadway’s Spellbinding ‘Oklahoma!’ Is Dead on Arrival in Minneapolis.” OneFanShow.com. 13 November 2021. ↩︎
- Bannow, “Surviving in the States.” ↩︎
- Lauer, “Review: Broadway’s Spellbinding ‘Oklahoma!’ Is Dead on Arrival in Minneapolis.” ↩︎
- “Oklahoma!” pittsburghclo.org. ↩︎
- Jade Goodes. “The Crackling Charm of Pittsburgh CLO’s ‘Oklahoma!’.” ↩︎
- Joshua Axelrod. “Reimagined ‘Oklahoma!’ coming to Benedum.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. 4 January 2022. ↩︎
- Melissa Karidis Fleming, personal interview. 8 February 2025. ↩︎
- Andrew Gans. “Tamyra Gray, Phillip Boykin, More Star in National Tour of Once On This Island Beginning October 12.” ↩︎
- Marvin Carlson. The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine. 7. ↩︎
- Charlotte M. Canning. Theatre & The USA, 56. ↩︎
- Warren Hoffman. The Great White Way: Race and the Broadway Musical. 2nd Edition, 60. ↩︎
- Canning, Theatre & The USA, 50. ↩︎
- Josephine Lee. The Japan of Pure Invention: Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado, 7. ↩︎
Works Cited
“Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!” Pittsburgh CLO, accessed February 28, 2025. https://www.pittsburghclo.org/shows/oklahoma.
Axelrod, Joshua. “Reimagined ‘Oklahoma!’ coming to Benedum.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. 4 January 2022. https://www.post-gazette.com/ae/theater-dance/2022/01/04/broadway-musical-oklahoma-benedum-center-gabriele-hamilton/stories/202201040002.
Bannow, Christopher. “Surviving in the States: Audience Rejection on the Road with Oklahoma!” 3 April 2023. https://howlround.com/surviving-states-audience-rejection-road-oklahoma.
Brantley, Ben. “Review: A Smashing ‘Oklahoma!’ Is Reborn in the Land of Id.” New York Times. 7 April 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/07/theater/oklahoma-review.html.
Canning, Charlotte M. Theatre & The USA. Great Britain: Methuen Drama. 2023.
Carlson, Marvin. The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 2001.
Carter, Tim. Oklahoma!: The Making of an American Musical. Revised edition. Oxford University Press. 2020.
Culwell-Block, Logan. “Oklahoma! Revival to Embark on National Tour.” Playbill.com. https://playbill.com/article/oklahoma-revival-to-embark-on-national-tour. 13 May 2019.
Gans, Andrew. “Tamyra Gray, Phillip Boykin, More Star in National Tour of Once On This Island Beginning October 12.” https://playbill.com/article/tamyra-gray-phillip-boykin-more-star-in-national-tour-of-once-on-this-island-beginning-october-12. 12 October 2019.
Green, Jesse and Ben Brantley. “Review: There’s a Dark, Golden haze in This Reclaimed ‘Oklahoma!’” New York Times. 7 October 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/theater/oklahoma-review.html
Goodes, Jade. “The Crackling Charm of Pittsburgh CLO’s ‘Oklahoma!’.” On Stage Pittsburgh. 25 June 2019. https://onstagepittsburgh.com/2019/06/25/the-crackling-charm-of-pittsburgh-clos-oklahoma/.
Hoffman, Warren. The Great White Way: Race and the Broadway Musical. 2nd Ed. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. 2020.
Karidis Fleming, Melissa. Personal interview. 8 February 2025.
Lauer, Alex. “Review: Broadway’s Spellbinding ‘Oklahoma!’ Is Dead on Arrival in Minneapolis.” OneFanShow.com. 13 November 2021. https://onefanshow.com/2021/11/13/review-broadways-spellbinding-oklahoma-is-dead-on-arrival-in-minneapolis/.
Lee, Josephine. The Japan of Pure Invention: Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado. University of Minnesota Press. 2010.
Sweigart-Gallagher, Angela and Aaron C. Thomas. “The Location’s the Thing: Endstation Theatre and Dramaturgies of Place.” Theatre Topics vol. 25, no. 1. 2015. 25-35.
Tepper, Jennifer Ashley. The Untold Stories of Broadway vol. 2. New York: Dress Circle Publishing, 2014.
Weiss, Heidy. “National Touring Production of ‘Oklahoma!’ Wreaks Havoc on a Musical Theater Classic.” WWTW. 13 January 2022. https://news.wttw.com/2022/01/13/national-touring-production-oklahoma-wreaks-havoc-musical-theater-classic.

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