Choice: Film

David Benedict
Tuesday 03 March 1998 01:02 GMT
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Oklahoma!, NFT, London SE1 (0171-928 3232) 6pm

Always, the notoriously bad flop musical about Edward and Mrs Simpson actually boasted "The Abdication Dream Ballet". Sadly, it was cut before opening night. Dream ballets made it big in musicals thanks to the now legendary Agnes de Mille. She'd choreographed Aaron Copland's Rodeo which made her ideal for Rodgers and Hammerstein's boys-in-cowboy-boots-meets girls musical despite the fact that she'd been fired from previous Broadway outings. Her dances, notably Laurey's Dream Ballet, is not an excuse to divert the audience with a number, it actually contains and dramatises a major hinge in the plot. No-one on Broadway had ever dared to use ballet to further the action before. Twelve years later, de Mille choreographed Fred Zinneman's movie version (shot in super- saturated Eastmancolour) which may not have the acting of anyone's dreams (farmhand Jud is flagrantly not Rod Steiger's finest hour) but oh, those songs.

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