Oklahoma!

The leaflets

Last week we thought to go to the Leatherhead Operatic Society's production of 'Oklahoma!' at the Epsom Playhouse, with our experience of this sort of am-dram having been quite good to date. One of which was a story about a burlesque dancer who makes good, the advertisement for which I happened to pass on my way to the baker at Cheam - but of which I can find no trace, either at reference 1 or anywhere else - and I am sure I would recognise the poster even if I can't bring the name of the show to mind. Most frustrating.

The proceedings started with a visit to the Christmas lights at Stoneleigh, where we were impressed by the effort that the shopkeepers on the parade had put into it, by the turnout of Christmas flavoured stalls and by the turnout of people, by no means all with small children. Indeed, for a between the wars shopping parade, it seemed to be doing pretty well. Certainly a lot better than some of the others in the borough. Maybe it is big enough to have some sort of critical mass?

We bagged some honey which had been made in our very own road and learned about how many pots of honey you got to the hive per year - apparently of the order of fifty - which seemed a very large number to me. But which is confirmed this morning at reference 2. We stopped at 'Think Vintage', where they had two Aladdin paraffin heaters for sale at £10 each. The very heaters which we used to use ourselves and which made it to the roof space here at Epsom, only finally making to the tip relatively recently. There is even a dim memory of our having bought paraffin from the hardware store in Pound Lane, now a convenience store. Read all about it at references 3 and 4. And one of the 'Think Vintage' salesmen was a proper barrow boy, with what seemed like an inexhaustible flow of sales patter. BH loved it.

Nipped home for a snack and then proceeded to the theatre, getting there in good time to buy a programme, to take an apéritif and to organise a digestif for the interval. Only a small bar, run on rather amateur lines, so we did not want to take a chance on the interval queue.

An approximation to the poster for the original show

The setting - one

The setting - two

Sadly, I found the show, although well enough put on, rather tedious. A romance from the days when the cattle herders and the wheat men were learning to get along with each other in Oklahoma. A smash hit on Broadway in 1943, set in what was then the Indian Territory of 1906. This being 1943, neither the Indians nor the Blacks got a mention - and I was disappointed that in the large cast there was no-one of colour - with the nearest they got being the pedlar from the middle east played by a white man in brown face paint. That apart, he did rather well.

I learned about a pleasant custom whereby all the girls took covered picnic baskets to dances, which were then auctioned to the boys, more or less blind. The suggestion being that some of the picnics were quite elaborate, with some of the girls being known more for their cooking than for their looks. From where I associate to the story about Eskimos (a word which was OK when I was young, even if it is no longer), according to which a man selected his wife according to how small she could sew. The point here being that small stitches meant waterproof clothes, an important matter in the far north. Far more important than how pretty she was.

To be fair, I did not know much about Oklahoma beyond dust bowl, oakies and oil until we got home and I looked it up. I had not realised, for example, that in the 19th century it had been assigned to the Indians, both those who were there already and those displaced from parts east. But that did not stop the whites moving in and the territory becoming a state - with reduced reservations for the Indians - in the early twentieth century. Furthermore, being on the fringe of the old south, one might have supposed that there would have been a fair number of blacks.

So a romance which might have been right for a time when people wanted a bit of light relief, but seriously economical with the truth. Interesting, given that it was a big hit in its day, to have seen it, but I don't suppose we will go again.

An offering from Ebay

PS: still ruminating about the missing burlesque dancer, I light upon a show name of 'Gipsy'. But that doesn't seem to agree with Bing. At this point, BH comes home and tells me in short order that the show we saw was based on a 1962 film of that name starring one Natalie Wood. From where I get to the 1959 musical by Sondheim. Which I am sure is the right show, but both Bing and Google still fail to turn up the production that we saw in Epsom.

PPS: a few more leads from Epsom Playhouse, but none of them came good. But I have learned that Oklahoma! is popular with am-dram groups, coming around quite regularly. Also that Imelda Staunton did it in 2015. Also two mentions from the very beginning of blog life, the first of which being at reference 5. So it is not a false memory, we really did go. Except that we went before blog life started, so it doesn't count - and it remains odd that neither Bing nor Google turn up any mention of this production.

Reference 1: https://www.eloc.org.uk/index.php/shows/past-shows.

Reference 2: https://beekeepinginsider.com/how-much-honey-does-a-hive-produce/.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/11/aladdin-fires.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/06/derby-action.html.

Reference 5: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=gypsy+ritter.