Classic American Musical 'Oklahoma!' Gets A Gay Makeover

Gays have invaded the world of musical theater, and oh lordy, is the fringe right seeing red. After all, who ever heard of such an outlandish thing?

The New York Times reported on an LGBTQ-inclusive version of "Oklahoma!" that Oregon Shakespeare Festival artistic director Bill Rauch had come up with. In 2016, the article said, Mr. Rauch gave his idea a trial run with a reading; in the audience was a representative of Concord Music, which owns the plays of Rogers and Hammerstein, authors of "Oklahoma!" Impressed with the reading, the rep gave the company's blessing to a full production of the gay- and lesbian-inclusive spin on the beloved stage work, in which Curley and Laurie are both women, while Will and Ado - Ado Andy, that is, rather than Ado Annie - are two men. There's also a trans character in the mix.

The play has turned out to be a hit. Moreover, the Times reported, its themes have gained a fresh cultural resonance three quarters of a century after the show originally opened.

"When Will asks for monogamy from the habitually available Andy, for example, it carries a different charge than when, in other productions, Will asks the same of Annie," the Times article noted. "Yet an Aunt Eller who is a transgender woman played by a transgender woman, as she is in Mr. Rauch's staging, is still, after all, Laurey's dear Aunt Eller."

Cross-gender casting, color-blind casting, and tweaks to classic texts that recast familiar characters in new, LGBTQ ways has proved to be a reliable way of refreshing long-familiar works. As the Times article noted, such strategies are regularly employed to breathe new life into Shakespeare's canon. In certain notable cases, the exact opposite holds true, and such cases are noteworthy for the very fact that authorial stipulations forbid such experimentation. In one famous example, openly gay playwright Edward Albee refused to allow any gay versions of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" to be staged.

If the radical, anti-LGBTQ right had its way, of course, that would be the way all texts would be treated. Homphobic site CBN News went into palpitations over the gay version of "Oklahoma!," going so far as to presume that if the descendants of Rogers and Hammerstein still held the rights to their ancestors' works they would put a stop to such shenanigans.

That, of course, remains in the realm of speculation. In the realm of reality, another timely occurrence saw Randy Rainbow adapt the song "Oklahoma!" for a satirical video in which Rainbow sang the praises of Omarosa for her willingness to take on Donald Trump.