Copious Notes

VERSAILLES — Complete outsiders might drive into this town of 7,818 thinking it’s a really cute place, and it’s awfully sweet they’re putting up a production of Oklahoma at the local theater.

Evan Sullivan as Curly and Jessie Rose Pennington as Laurey in 'Oklahoma.' Photo courtesy of The Woodford Theatre.

Then they would settle into their seats and soon have to sweep their jaws off the floor when the lights come up on a morning sky so perfectly pink you’d think there wasn’t a back wall on the stage, and the actors are not only singing with these gorgeous voices but catching every nuance in Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein III’s show.

Now, if you’ve been following the steady evolution of The Woodford Theatre (until recently the Woodford County Theatrical Arts Association) under Beth Kirchner’s direction, you come expecting a much higher quality production than most people would presume a small town theater would put up. But that doesn’t mean Oklahoma isn’t a pleasant surprise, even to the initiated.

Like Lexington’s Paragon Music Theatre a few weeks ago with The King and I, Woodford Theatre has really outdone itself with this R&H production and taken its game to a new level. You have to wonder how Central Kentucky went nearly half a decade with no one regularly presenting musical theater, and now these triumphant productions are busting out all over.

It certainly helps to have Evan Sullivan and Jessie Rose Pennington, quickly becoming the leading man and woman of Lexington-area musical theater, in the leads.

Sullivan, a Woodford Theatre veteran, looks as comfortable in his chaps and cowboy hat playing Curly as he did in a suit and tie as Harold Hill last spring in Paragon’s Music Man. He’s a consummate actor with the right dose of charm for a musical theater leading man. And Pennington is a perfect foil for Sullivan playing Laurey, just as she was playing Marian in Music Man. Their first few scenes have a contentious chemistry that we can all see through, and it quickly thaws.

But they are just part of the show, and Kirchner has assembled a deep cast with some reliable standbys such as Melissa Rae Wilkeson as Aunt Eller. She shows empathetic grit and takes over several numbers such as The Farmer and the Cowman, which at one point she conducts with a pistol in her hand. Kirchner also has winners in the supporting couple of Adam Richard Fister as Will Parker and Sydney Steele, already a stage veteran in her junior year of high school, as Ado Annie. We must also give a shout out to Wes Nelson in the scene-stealing-special role of Ali Hakim, the traveling salesman who is Will’s rival for Annie’s affections, at least in Annie’s mind.

But the casting choice that really demonstrates this show’s depth is Brian Douglas Barker as Jud.

You can see a lot of community theater R&H productions that play the shows as puttin’ on the hits. But there is a real strong sense of pathos and melancholy in Barker’s performance that puts the theater in this musical theater production. Pennington’s reaction to him is also a key to this, as there is palpable fear in her voice and body the first time she talks about Jud.

Choreographer Jenny Fitzpatrick gets amazing dance work out of the cast, particularly in the ballet that closes Act I and that Farmer and the Cowman number. And Russell Mendez’s set and Todd Pickett’s lighting design finish this show’s professional sheen.

This is a production that could play towns many, many times Versailles’ size. And if you aren’t familiar with this troupe, maybe it’s time to get acquainted. It’s worth the drive.

Michael Johnathon is pretty hard on his hero in the opening act of Walden: The Ballad of Thoreau.

We find Henry David Thoreau, as played by Adam Luckey, in his cabin at Walden Pond sounding like the years alone have really, really gotten to him. For a man with nothing on his calendar, he’s almost breathless trying to figure out what to do with himself. When he thinks, “music and art are born at sunrise,” he is torn between whether he needs to write that down or play his flute, thereby creating some musical art. He putters, chatting with his wood pile and snap beans until a blessed moment of self awareness: “Dear God, you’re having conversations with peas and finding it intellectual.”

Johnathan doesn’t shy away from the fact that even today, as Thoreau is now considered a literary giant and the forefather of the environmental movement, his personality and journey can seem a little bit odd and sad. But that acknowledgment and a steady refinement of Thoreau’s ideas through Ralph Waldo Emerson and two other visitors to Thoreau’s cabin raise this script well above two acts of hero worship.

Yes, the play can be a little preachy and preoccupied with Thoreau’s need for a woman. But it and the documentary segments that bookend the new video production are informative about Thoreau and particularly the ways in which he foresaw the impact of modern technological progress on the environment. The video was made last fall, with segments filmed at Walden Pond in Concord, Mass., some Lexington woods, and at performances of the Walden play at the Lexington Opera House last fall.

With supporting performances by Eric Johnson, Anthony Haigh and Jessie Rose Pennington, and solid stage direction from Beth Kirchner and video direction by Doug Smart, the film fulfills a popular environmentally-based slogan: Kentucky Proud. The production will be broadcast on KET and WEKU-FM 88.9 locally and be seen around the country this Earth Day week. The script is available for free download at the Walden play site to anyone who wants to perform it, so long as they register their performance. According to Johnathon, more that 7,000 people or groups have already done that. The program is also available on DVD.