As an extremely passionate fan of (almost) all things musical theater, I do have to honor Oklahoma!'s is milestone status-it is perhaps the most influential American musical ever made. And it was, at least, revolutionary for its time. When it opened on Broadway in 1943, Oklahoma! got rave reviews in almost every paper for, as critic Brooke Atkinson wrote, making "the banalities of the old musical stage ... intolerable." And playwright Thomas Hischak wrote "[Oklahoma!] is the first fully integrated musical play and its blending of song, character, plot and even dance would serve as the model for Broadway shows for decades." And that's true: Oklahoma!, Rogers and Hammerstein's first collaboration, marked in many ways the beginning of the "book musical." Okay, that's nice. Oklahoma!-cutesy as a jackrabbit, sugary-sweet as one of Laurey's gooseberry tarts, subtle as Ado Annie herself-is so earnest and corny that it necessitates the exclamation mark tacked on to the end of its name and also, now that it is 67, a permanent retirement. READ MORE