‘Oklahoma!’ loses some weight

“There’s a bright, golden haze on the meadow,” rhapsodizes Curly, the cowboy with the soul of a poet in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!” The haze hanging over the touring production at the Pantages Theatre, however, is more like Southern California smog, lifting only intermittently to reveal the piercing drama of the Royal National Theatre staging on which it is based.

Directed by Trevor Nunn and choreographed by Susan Stroman, the 1998 National Theatre staging became famous for acknowledging the nightmares lurking inside the American dream. Shortly before Oklahoma achieves statehood in 1907, telegraph poles have already sprouted on the parched but golden land, and Curly’s “surrey with the fringe on top” turns out to be a horseless carriage. For better or worse, the hardscrabble settlers are “civilizing” the land. Impetuous and headstrong, they will build a nation in their own image.

This budget-minded touring edition, with its too-small orchestra and nonunion actors, lacks the courage of the original’s convictions. As re-created under Fred Hanson’s direction, the presentation tries to laugh away the darkness. Pushed toward comic caricature, the characters’ exaggerated Okie accents and clownishly cocksure behavior reduce them to harmless hillbillies. By the time the story’s inherent romance and drama finally catch hold, we’re more than halfway through the nearly three-hour performance.

The cast at the Pantages is substantially different than the one that performed at the Orange County Performing Arts Center last June. Of the principals, only Pat Sibley as Earth Motherish Aunt Eller and Daniel Robinson as trick-roping cowboy Will Parker are the same.

Overall, the performances are fine, if insufficiently nuanced. To anyone who hasn’t seen the widely available recorded version of the original, in which a then-little-known Hugh Jackman played Curly, the presentation might even seem as revelatory as it did to the London audiences who first experienced it.

Jeremiah James puts a swagger in Curly’s step but lets dreaminess seep into his eyes. His baritone singing voice is soft and supple at the top of his range, booming and virile in the middle and lower regions. Though his slicked-back dark hair isn’t very curly, he’s an engaging Curly, even if he displays an unfortunate tendency to pull funny faces whenever he’s trying to be playful.

Curly is a cowboy in love with a farm girl, the friction between their lifestyles increased by a fear of revealing how much they’re attracted to each other. So Laurey, against her better judgment, accepts the attention of the scary Jud Fry, sending the story into danger-fraught territory.

Tomboyish in overalls, Julie Burdick’s Laurey undergoes a Cinderella-like transformation when she changes into the new dress that her guardian, her crusty but nurturing Aunt Eller, has bought for her. A fluttery soprano singing voice helps to accent Burdick’s innocence as she is menaced by Jud.

Early on, Andrew Lebon portrays Jud as too much of a lamebrain, but he achieves an aching loneliness just before the character turns irredeemably mean.

A glimpse into the orchestra pit at intermission reveals a far-flung array of keyboards, which explains the hollow, blunt-edged electronic fill sound around the 12 live musicians. Further distorting Tuesday’s opening performance were miked singing voices so loud that they often seemed to pin theatergoers against their seats.

The big dances look pretty good, though. Stroman’s visions of fancy-stepping, bowlegged cowboys and willowy yet rambunctious frontier women -- reproduced here by Ginger Thatcher -- may lack crispness at times but fill the stage with drama too often missing elsewhere.

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‘Oklahoma!’

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Where: Pantages Theatre, 6233 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood

When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sundays

Ends: Jan. 30

Price: $42.50 to $67.50

Contact: (213) 365-3500 or www.BroadwayLA.org

Running time: 2 hours, 55 minutes