Oklahoma Musical

With its simple story line and unlikely opening--a woman churning butter on stage while an offstage voice sings about the beautiful mornin'--it's hard to think of "Oklahoma!" as a revolutionary stage work. But when it premiered on Broadway in 1943, this maiden effort of composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist-librettist Oscar Hammerstein II was hailed as the first musical to seamlessly integrate book, songs and dance to tell its story.

With its simple story line and unlikely opening--a woman churning butter on stage while an offstage voice sings about the beautiful mornin'--it's hard to think of "Oklahoma!" as a revolutionary stage work. But when it premiered on Broadway in 1943, this maiden effort of composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist-librettist Oscar Hammerstein II was hailed as the first musical to seamlessly integrate book, songs and dance to tell its story.

Kristin Chenoweth. Remember the name. If the quickly rising career arc of the Oklahoma-born musical theater singing star is any indication, she will be around for some time to come. In fact, NBC has already earmarked "Kristin," a sitcom in which she plays a small-town Oklahoma girl pursuing Broadway stardom, to premiere this spring.

In an exercise sure to start arguments among music lovers, National Public Radio has created its list of the 100 most important American musical works of the century. The list started with 300 songs suggested by a group of producers, artists and experts familiar to NPR. In mid-October, NPR allowed the public to vote on the selection. More than 13,000 listeners cast their votes online and through the mail. A panel of 15 musicians considered the same 300 songs.

As much as anything he tried to do with his music and in his life, Woody Guthrie consistently stressed the "unity" in "community," an attitude that was fully embraced by some three dozen participants in Saturday's kickoff event in a yearlong national and international salute to the legacy of America's greatest folk troubadour, who would have turned 100 on July 14. Guthrie's son, Arlo, was musical ringmaster of the star-studded 31/2-hour demonstration of...

"Annie Warbucks," the new Broadway-bound sequel to "Annie," and "Phantom," the Arthur Kopit and Maury Yeston version of "The Phantom of the Opera" will be the highlights of the Starlight Musical Theatre's first winter season. Also on tap: "Fiddler on the Roof," "Grease" and "Oklahoma!" The winter schedule, which runs October through May in the Civic and Spreckels theaters, will allow Starlight to produce year-round for the first time in its 47-year history.

Four hours to showtime. Workers, quick and sure-handed, push tables into place and haul instruments out into the glare of stage lights. In front of the blackness that is 2,000 empty seats, Brooke Averi and Brandon Beltran rehearse a dance. The two move effortlessly, the reward for endless hours of practice. Averi looks into the darkness of the three-tiered theater, and it hits her. This is it. This is their final big performance of their senior year at the Orange County High School of the Arts.

George Balanchine's 18-minute jazz ballet "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" is doubly popular this season. Performed alternately by Natalia Makarova and Rebecca Wright, it continues to be the dance highlight of the 1936 Rodgers and Hart musical "On Your Toes" (currently at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion). Danced by Suzanne Farrell, it has also recently appeared on New York City Ballet mixed bills back East for the first time in 14 years.

"Thoroughly Modern Millie," a musical based on the 1967 film about a gold-digging flapper, captured the most nominations--11, including nods for best musical, best actress and best actor--for the 2002 Tony Awards. The nominees were announced Monday morning at Sardi's by Steven Weber of "The Producers" and Jennifer Jason Leigh of "Proof."

Richard Rodgers' and Oscar Hammerstein's first musical collaboration can't possibly be as exciting today as it was in 1943--we're just too different--but the Starlight Opera's "Oklahoma!" is full of simple pleasures. The first of these is the gorgeous actor, Chuck Wagner, crooning Curly's "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin' " from a corn patch "planted" along the side of the Starlight Bowl.

The death of the musical is a sore point for any serious lover of the form. It's a perennial topic, made relevant recent ly by the Broadway premiere of the great-looking "Sunset Boulevard"--a show that offers visual grandeur but very little in the way of heart or even joy, traditionally the musical's stock in trade. Norma Desmond is not the first deranged protagonist in a musical, but she lacks the big emotion, unless you count fear and insecurity.