Oklahoma! – Bord Gáis Energy Theatre – Review

RODGERS & HAMMERSTEIN’S OKLAHOMA! –
Dates: 19 June – 05 July 2026

Oklahoma! is set in 1906 in the farmlands outside the town of Claremore in Oklahoma Territory, before Oklahoma officially became a state in November 1907. It was a time of tension between cowboys and farmers, and those rivalries form the backdrop to this classic musical. We first meet Curly McLain (David James Whelan) as he arrives at the home of Laurey Williams (Molly Lynch), hoping to persuade her to accompany him to the box social that evening. Laurey, however, feels Curly has left it too late and greets him with cool irritation. Instead, she agrees to attend with Jud Fry (Oliver Flitcroft), setting up a familiar romantic triangle in which the path of true love proves anything but smooth. Over the course of the day, we follow the residents of this close-knit community as they prepare for the dance and reveal the hopes, tensions and relationships that shape their lives.

The majority of productions staged at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre are touring productions that begin life in London before making their way to Dublin. This staging, however, is a more homegrown affair: an in-house Bord Gáis Energy Theatre production, led by David James Whelan as Curly McLain alongside Cork-born musical theatre star Molly Lynch as Laurey Williams. Whelan will be familiar to many as the lead singer of Wild Youth; he also represented Ireland at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2023 and reached the final of RTÉ’s Dancing with the Stars in 2024. The cast has a distinctly Irish flavour, with several familiar faces, including Fair City’s Enda Oates as Andrew Carnes.

The original Broadway production of Oklahoma! opened on 31 March 1943, in the midst of the Second World War. Based on Lynn Riggs’s 1931 play Green Grow the Lilacs, it became a landmark work in musical theatre and earned Rodgers and Hammerstein a special Pulitzer Prize in 1944. It may not be the most daring or fashionable musical by contemporary standards, but it remains a beloved staple of school, amateur and professional productions alike. Now more than eighty years old, and set in an even earlier era, it offers a distinctly traditional vision of life in a changing America.

This production does not attempt to radically reinvent the musical or impose a modern conceptual slant upon it. Instead, it leans into the show’s strengths, particularly its choreography, with several impressive dance sequences enlivening the set changes and an extended dream sequence. Even those unfamiliar with the musical will recognise many of its songs, including “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’”, “I Cain’t Say No” and the rousing title number, “Oklahoma”. One of the production’s strengths is its comic subplot, in which Ado Annie Carnes (Rachel Gaughan) struggles to choose between the earnest Will Parker (Sacha Koplewsky) and the charmingly slippery Ali Hakim (Julian Capolei). Their scenes provide some of the evening’s biggest laughs and inject the production with a welcome sense of energy and fun. For audiences who know and love Oklahoma! from school or amateur productions, there is much here to enjoy, while those coming to it for the first time will find an impressive staging of a musical theatre classic.