The Fifth Avenue Theatre, 2012

Composer: Richard Rodgers

Book and Lyrics: Oscar Hammerstein II

Director: Peter Rothstein

Choreographer: Donald Byrd

Costumes: Linda Salsbury

Lights: Tom Sturge

"Director Peter Rothstein understands something crucial: For all of its broad comic gestures and a rousing, joyous rendition of the title tune at the finale, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s first collaboration is a fundamentally dark — or at least, incredibly ambivalent — work. The possibility of the unknown means hope and fear are co-mingling in unsettling ways, and with the promise of new statehood comes the reality that a big bright future may not be in store for everyone.

Nowhere is that subtext more precisely evoked than in Matthew Smucker’s brilliant scenic design. The opening scene frames Curly against a rectangular cutout of the sky, evoking an iconic doorway image from John Ford’s The Searchers. A series of shifting barn door panels occasionally make way for the big blue vista of the wide-open Oklahoma sky in the background, but more often they constrict, letting just a little bit of that sign of boundless potential through. It’s haunting, thrilling design work that sees the enormously talented Smucker outdoing himself again." - Blogcritics.org