Oklahoma!

Oklahoma!, the first musical written by the duo Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, opened on Broadway in March 1943, ran for a then-unprecedented 2,212 performances, and earned a special Pulitzer Prize. It later enjoyed an Oscar-winning 1955 film adaptation, five Broadway revivals to 2020, and countless high-school, collegiate, community, regional, and international productions. It tells the story of farm girl Laurey Williams and her courtship by two rival suitors, cowboy Curly McLain and farmhand Jud Fry, in 1906, the moment when so-called Indian Territory stood on the cusp of statehood. Behind the show’s romantic complications—and its memorable musical numbers—stand broader questions of community, belonging, and national identity, and the costs of answering those questions.