#oklahoma! the musical

[asdeadasasquirrel]

Radiorose week day 2: shared meetings

If you meet up and hang out enough, people start to talk, you know? @radioroseweek

[papasbaseball]

Anyway, I really love Oklahoma! (the musical). The amount of character depth is fucking insane.

Spoilers below, along with a rant on writing

Jud is probably without a doubt one of the worst villains out there. He has almost no redeeming qualities and if you look into his lines you know that HE knows that Laurey doesn't want him, and he continuously tries to get her alone anyways.

But there's a song early in the first act, "Poor Jud is Daid", where Curly has to make up a scenario out of the Freudian slip of suggesting that Jud hang himself. He promises Jud that all the folks in the county secretly have nice things to say about him, but he'll never hear them until he's dead. This is about the only time we see Jud happy during the whole musical: during a song about his death where the community finally understands and loves him.

HOWEVER, later on, when he falls on his own knife and kills himself on accident, not only is there no reprise of the song, but basically the whole community agrees to rush and do Curly's trial unofficially because "it's his wedding night" and a man shouldn't have to spend his wedding night locked up in jail. The judge even coaxes Curly into the "right" answers to get him a not guilty verdict.

The county didn't even have enough respect for Jud to give Curly a full murder/manslaughter trial. Thus, not only was the song "Poor Jud is Daid" wrong, it was egregiously wrong to the point where his killer is "rewarded" with a honeymoon and get out of jail free card, from a meta standpoint.

It's important to note that Jud and Curly are foils. The actors for Jud and Curly cannot be role switched and the musical still make sense (particularly in the 1999 filmed stage production). It is necessary that Jud have no redeeming features, and that includes being conventionally attractive. Curly is smart, clean, quick-witted, a good shot, and charming. Jud is none of these, and it's important that he's not because it drives a point home.

He's thrifty and a hard worker, but none of his efforts matters because the community does not love him and never will, based on personality and birth traits alone.

AND THAT'S THE MIRACULOUS THING ABOUT THESE CHARACTERS.

In the end, you should feel happy for Curly and Laurey. They're married and in love, Oklahoma just became a state, and it's a brand new day. You should be happy that Jud is dead, he'd been antagonizing Laurey after all (and severely). But part of you feels for him. He never had a chance and only wanted "real" love (not the nude pictures he hung up in his hovel). His own murder trial was rigged. The town had already planned to crush under the sole of their boot from the moment he moved in.

He's such a wonderfully complex character, and something so rarely seen now. I've been thinking about him non-stop for the past 24 hours from a writer's standpoint. He boasts no attractive qualities to draw you to him but rather leaves you with an unsettling feeling and a self-pity as we recall our own times when we've felt like an outcast that can do nothing right, doomed to be deemed unworthy of love.

If I could ever write a character or commentary as complex and well thought out as that, I'd be over the moon.

[a-secret-land]

And just as I'm thinkin' all the earth is still A lark'll wake up in the medder Hush you bird, my baby's a-sleepin' Maybe got a dream worth a-keepin' Whoa, you team and just keep a-creepin' At a slow clip-clop | "Oklahoma!" (1955)

[trashpidgeon48]

Musicals are time loops. Every night, the same thing happens except for a few minor differences. It always ends the same. If you want the characters to do something different or to make better choices, too bad. The actors are bound by the script and the score. The only way for the time loop to end is for the show to close. But you (the audience) don't want the show to close, nor do the actors who would like to be employed. It's a lose/lose situation. For the actors, audience, technicians, and for the characters, who are forever stuck in the same stretch of time.

[darlinggash]

don’t even get me started on how good he looked in this movie 😫

[razzafrazzle]

okie miku!! or more specifically texoma miku bc I have no clue what happens up near the panhandle </3 she's chahta also. more like hatsune maka

[image description: a page of drawings of a oklahoma-themed design for hatsune miku, where she is darker-skinned, wears beaded earrings, and has visible tan lines. on the right is a full-body drawing of her wearing a university of oklahoma shirt and boots, where she is carrying a braum's bag and shake with a thought bubble reading "damn texas drivers". on the left are a drawing of her in an okc thunder shirt, where she is holding a beer in one hand and doing a downwards longhorns gesture with the other. below that is a scene of miku sleeping in a lawn chair in a field with a tornado occurring in the distance. end id]

[morgangalaxy43]

“Musicals are bad” “musicals are overrated” they are amazing and they have brought us some of the greatest songs, plays and movies ever and some of you just hate having a good time

[commiepinkofag]

Max Hightower, a senior, has been active in Sherman High School's theater productions throughout his school years, and his dedication paid off when he landed the male lead last month in "Oklahoma!," reported KXII-TV. … But shortly after he was cast in the part, Max said the school principal and told him about a new policy that would take away his role because he identifies as a transgender male. “Actors and actresses could only play a role that was the same gender they were assigned at birth,” Max said. “I was devastated." The school district said the show would be postponed until January due to what officials called sexual content and profanity, and they said while there was no policy on how students are assigned to roles, for this production the gender of the role as identified in the script would determine casting.

[planted-freckle]

fellas is it gay to want to run away with your best friend to a place with open spaces the sounds of whip-poor-wills we could watch the sun set over golden rolling hills a house with flowers on the windowsill and you could read us stories and outside in the yard we’d have ourselves a garden, but we wouldn't work too hard and every night we'd stare up at the stars we'd sit around the fire after every day was through we'd be each other's family, Pony, start this life anew this could be a chance to have a place to rest your head you'd wake up every morning in a big old feather bed

[hopecel]

Other girls are coy and hard to catch but other girls ain't havin' any fun 💘 👉👈

[riordanness]

“ OH WHAT A BEAUTIFUL MORNIN’ “

CURLY MCLAIN played by HUGH JACKMAN

[outsiderslore]

death’s at my door genuinely breaks my heart like wdym “i had no reason to live back in tulsa. sadness was all that i knew. i don’t believe in the death that you’re bringing, the reason i’m living is you.” umm what. bc johnny genuinely would do anything for ponyboy obviously INCLUDING k!lling someone for him. which is more then so many people can say about their friends. ponyboy was johnny’s family and it’s that aspect of their relationship that really hits me hard because they loved eachother more than anything.

[teenytinysandwiches]

Jeremy Jordan | "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’" | (Official Music Video)

[queenmakings]

SCHMIGADOON RESIDENTS / THE MUSICAL THEATER CHARACTERS THEY’RE BASED ON

[darrys-laundry]

[ifelllikeastar]

Remembering Toby Keith

When Toby was young his grandmother owned Billie Garner's Supper Club in Fort Smith, Arkansas where he became interested in the musicians who came there to play. He did odd jobs around the supper club and started getting up on the bandstand to play with the band. He got his first guitar at the age of eight.

Born Toby Keith Covel on July 8, 1961 and died on February 5, 2024 at the age of 62