Oklahoma!

It's a thought that immediately springs to mind as Oxford Operatic Society's orchestra plays the rip-roaring overture to the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! at the Playhouse this week.

Unlike some modern musicals, where a couple of tunes are rehashed to fill an entire evening, the Oklahoma! overture introduces a whole basket of numbers -- Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin', The Surrey with the Fringe on Top, People Will Say We're in Love, and Out of my Dreams among them.

The show is set in the open spaces of pioneer America -- where there's "plenty of room to swing a rope", as someone puts it.

This being a musical, it's a remarkably wholesome place too, with even hired farmhand Jud (an excellently glowering performance from Robert Williams) looking spotless: "I got dirt, pig-slop, on my hands," he assures us. You just have to imagine it.

Jud, ominously fond of drink and quick to draw his pistol, fancies Laurey (Sarah Leatherbarrow). But so does clean-living Curly (an assured Guy Brigg). Meanwhile Ado Annie (Nicola Ball, feisty as the girl who "Cain't Say No!") is torn between Will (a strong characterisation from Dave Crewe) and seedy peddler Ali Hakim (Charlie Ross, giving the star cameo performance of the evening). Dispensing advice is Aunt Eller (Mary Ross): "Why don't you just grabba and kissa -- she likes yer," she suggests.

All the solo roles are well sung and acted, but on opening night there were lapses in projection, so words weren't always clearly audible. Director Ann Robson had no such problems with the chorus, who sang with real snap and crackle.

There are so many in the chorus, however, that the limits of the Playhouse stage meant that some of the choreography looked too prissy and precise. But who cares about that when you've got Richard Rodgers' score swirling across the footlights?