If you’re a Broadway fan at all, you’ve surely heard about the revival of Oklahoma! currently playing at the Circle in the Square Theater (through January 19, 2020).

It was nominated for eight Tony Awards. It won for Best Revival. And Ali Stroker won for Best Featured Actress. Stroker also made history as the first person in a wheelchair to win a Tony.

But the show made a lot of headlines for other reasons when it premiered back in March. It’s presented as a theater in the round, the lights remain on during the entire performance (with a few exceptions of total blackout), the audience is served chili and cornbread at intermission, the cast is more diverse than ever before (i.e., it’s not lily white), and the second half begins with a polarizing 13-minute sequence of modern dance.

It’s… different. And quite honestly, it should probably come with a few trigger warnings.

If you’re not familiar with this Oklahoma!, strap in. It’s a hell of a ride.

I’m going to be honest here. Before seeing the show, the extent of my knowledge of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s original show was the scene in When Harry Met Sally where they sing a karaoke “Surrey with a Fringe on Top.”

I had always assumed it was a feel-food show with a bunch of song-and-dance numbers that looked at American pioneers and the Old West through rose-colored glasses. (And now that I’ve gone back and watched the original, I can say that was… mostly accurate.)

This new production, directed by Daniel Fish, is an entirely different beast.

Fish has used the bones of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic to craft something totally new, exceptionally unique, and disturbingly relevant to 2019 America.

It’s still set in turn-of-the-20th-century Oklahoma Territory, on the precipice of its admittance to the union in 1907 as the 46th state. It still focuses on farm girl Laurey Williams and the coming-of-age conflict she faces while getting pursued by two men. And it still features all the songs fans of the original know and love (“Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’,” “Surrey with a Fringe on Top,” “I Can’t Say No,” “People Will Say We’re in Love,” and all the rest).

But those similarities are simply window dressing. They remain to make the show feel somewhat familiar and give the audience an entry point.

What Fish, choreographer John Heginbotham, and the cast have done here is create a musical that merely feels well established and classic. What they deliver is a wholly fresh take on a show – about a time when white Americans felt incredibly hopeful about the future of their still young and growing country – that was written in 1943 at the arguable height of American patriotism, and they’ve flipped it all upside down.

As the play begins, the entire cast enters and sits around the perimeter of the “stage,” right beside and practically in the audience. From their vantage points, they watch the entire show unfold, only getting up and moving around when they have a part to play in the action.

Until then, though, they sit and stare. And stare they do. If you look around at the cast while they’re not “on,” many sit motionless and stare at the other actors with an unsettling intensity that seems odd at first but eventually feels entirely appropriate.

Our dreamy hero, Curly (Damon Daunno), starts the show with a slowed-down, bluegrassy version of “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’.” But this version doesn’t make you want to get up and sing along. It doesn’t evoke the optimism Rodgers and Hammerstein meant to ascribe to 1906 pioneers, and it doesn’t recall the wartime patriotism 1940s audiences would’ve felt.

No, this version makes you scratch your head and wonder, “What on Earth is so beautiful about it?” And you know that Curly, the down-on-his-luck cowhand who can’t get the girl he likes to even acknowledge him, is wondering the same thing. He’s singing the words, but he clearly doesn’t mean them.

And it’s that message that carries this production of Oklahoma! We’re all just going through the motions. Singing the words we think we should be singing. Doing what’s expected.

But we’re not changing anything. We’re not doing anything that matters. The world continues its steady decline, and we continue to look away, convinced it’s someone else’s problem. I’ve got my own issues to deal with; surely someone else will clean up that mess, right?

Curly is so set on “winning” Laurey that he doesn’t hear her when she tells him she’s scared of Jud Fry, the farmhand who is also seeking her attention. She practically screams out, “Help me! He’s going to hurt me!” But Curly looks away. Her Aunt Eller looks away. Her friend Ado Annie looks away. Everyone looks away.

Sound familiar?

Yet “seeking her attention” hardly does Jud justice here. In this production, Jud isn’t just a creepy, “misunderstood” tough guy. He’s every internet troll, incel, and rapist we see in the news every day. He’s toxic masculinity incarnate. And he’s absolutely terrifying.

The show progresses, for better or worse, through the motions. Curly and Jud compete for Laurey (Sasha Hutchings, in a stunning understudy performance). Ado Annie juggles two potential suitors. There are a few uncomfortable laughs. Curly and Laurey fall in love. The town comes together at a box social dance.

Despite the brutal undercurrent of torment and despair beneath it all, life – as it does – moves on.

Until it doesn’t. Until it all blows up.

By the end of the play, the protagonists we thought were heroes turn sideways. Which shouldn’t come as a surprise. Because we live in a country where school shootings are the norm, blood-soaked faces are on TV every night, and powerful men use their power to control women. Nothing changes.

And when we have a president who claims he could shoot someone in the street and get away with it, who’s good? Who’s bad? Is there even a difference? And who cares anymore?

In the show’s culminating scenes, Jud is dead and Curly and Laurey are literally dripping with blood. Yet with Curly surrounded and ultimately protected by friends and popularity, we realize that none of it matters. And we begin to see a lot of unpleasant parallels between him and other… powerful men we see today.

Curly literally gets away with murder because people like him. His popularity gives him power. And Jud, despite his deep character flaws, is thrown under the bus and will never see justice.

America in 2019 is so totally unlike it was in 1906 or 1943. For far too many, the “land of the free and home of the brave” has become a nightmare reality. And it’s that painful truth that this Oklahoma! scratches at. In the show’s final moments, as he’s dripping in Jud’s blood, it’s impossible to see Curly as a hero.

But like Curly, we all have blood on our hands. We all know that through our silence and inaction, we’re complicit in the horrors we see on the news and in our social media feeds. Nevertheless, like Curly, we twist the story. We escape the consequences. We take whatever we can. We sing and dance and pretend.

Oh what a beautiful morning,
Oh what a beautiful day,
I’ve got a wonderful feeling,
Everything’s going my way.