Pore Jud Is Daid - Antecedents and Influence

Antecedents and Influence

According to playwright and theatre writer Thomas Hischak, "Not only is 'Oklahoma!' the most important of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, it is also the single most influential work in the American musical theatre. ... It is the first fully integrated musical play and its blending of song, character, plot and even dance would serve as the model for Broadway shows for decades." William Zinsser observed that Oklahoma! broke the old "musical comedy conventions", with the songs "delving into character" and advancing the plot. The show "became a milestone, so that later historians writing about important moments in twentieth-century theatre would begin to identify eras according to their relationship to Oklahoma!" Oklahoma! made Rodgers and Hammerstein "the most important contributors to the musical-play form. ... The examples they set in creating vital plays, often rich with social thought, provided the necessary encouragement for other gifted writers to create musical plays of their own".

Theater historian Ethan Mordden points out that, although Oklahoma! has been called "the first integrated musical, the first American folk musical", Show Boat "got there first on both counts." Even earlier, the Princess Theatre musicals, following Gilbert and Sullivan and French opéra bouffe, began the reintegration of song and story after decades of thinly plotted British and American musicals, paving the way for Show Boat and Oklahoma! by showing that a musical could combine popular entertainment with continuity between its story and songs. These Princess Theatre shows, which featured modern American settings, "built and polished the mold from which almost all later major musical comedies evolved. ... The characters and situations were, within the limitations of musical comedy license, believable and the humor came from the situations or the nature of the characters. Kern's exquisitely flowing melodies were employed to further the action or develop characterization." Mordden also notes that Oklahoma! was called the first great dance musical, but other musicals had earlier focused on dance, among them Gay Divorce and On Your Toes. He concludes: "But Oklahoma! was the first American musical with an ethnic sound, words and music entirely in the folk idiom."