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Classic 'Oklahoma!' Musical Turned into a Gay Play

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The classic Rogers and Hammerstein musical "Oklahoma!" has been revised into a new version of the beloved stage play, removing the straight couples and replacing them with gay couples.

The New York Times reports the new play is the brainchild of a gay man named Bill Rauch who first gave the idea life at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2016, where he is the artistic director.  In this Oregon "Oklahoma!," the central couple Curley and Laurey are two women.  And the secondary romance is between two male characters Will Parker and Ado Andy, which was changed from the original Ado Annie. 

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The new version of the play opened at a theater in Ashville, Oregon last April. 

The original version of the play was the first musical written by Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein II.  The play was based on Lynn Riggs' 1931 play 'Green Grow The Lilacs" which was set outside of Riggs' hometown of Claremore, Oklahoma. It opened on Broadway in 1943 and was adapted into a movie winning an Academy Award in 1955.  

The song "Oklahoma!" was adopted by the Oklahoma legislature as the official state song in 1953.

Unfortunately, the heirs of Rogers and Hammerstein no longer have a say in what happens to their plays.  According to the Times, the entire catalog hasn't been family-owned since 2009.  It is now owned by Concord Music, an American company, which licenses around 500 productions of "Oklahoma!" a year.

It's just the latest activist effort to twist classic American entertainment into pro-gay entertainment. For example, as CBN News reported, Netflix recently produced an adaptation of the 1908 novel Anne of Green Gables, which was revised to include multiple homosexual characters.

As CBN News reported in March, Disney, a company that was built producing family entertainment, may showcase an LGBTQ couple in the sequel to the 2013 animated film Frozen. The sequel will be released in November 2019.

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About The Author

Steve Warren is a senior multimedia producer for CBN News. Warren has worked in the news departments of television stations and cable networks across the country. In addition, he also worked as a producer-director in television production and on-air promotion. A Civil War historian, he authored the book The Second Battle of Cabin Creek: Brilliant Victory. It was the companion book to the television documentary titled Last Raid at Cabin Creek currently streaming on Amazon Prime. He holds an M.A. in Journalism from the University of Oklahoma and a B.A. in Communication from the University of