‘Oklahoma!' on stage at Bandon Playhouse

BANDON — Faced with a young man who wants to marry his daughter, an Oklahoma farmer offers her for $50.

Faced with a suitor who doesn’t want to marry her, the farmer brandishes his gun and implies an engagement is in order.

Perhaps it would have paid for the first guy to play hard to get.

But that would eliminate a major subplot of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!,” a Bandon Playhouse production opening tonight at the Sprague Community Theater.

In a musical, there’s always plenty that can go wrong in the crucial task of making sure the right couples end up together. Again typical for a musical, in this task, the women are no help.

For Curly (Darren Dirk), it’s simple: He knows he wants to be with Laurey (Lori Straley). Curly is a cowman — the peculiar, but perhaps more politically correct, term for cowboys in the Oklahoma territory in 1906, a year before the territory became a state. Laurey is a woman who lives on a farm with her aunt.

Aunt Eller (Pat Decell) is convinced Laurey likes Curly back and that they would be a good match, but Laurey, of course, is not so convinced. She turns down Curly’s invitation to the box social because she’s not interested but also because, even if she were interested, he probably couldn’t provide a decent ride.

It’s not really clear how Laurey feels, although she talks about it long enough to be accused of protesting too much. At any rate, until she makes up her mind about Curly, it seems Laurey would prefer to avoid men.

Her friend Ado Annie (Courtney Gaspar), whose first name rhymes with Play-Doh, takes a different approach to the problem of deciding how she feels about her two boyfriends. As she explains in song, she’s “a girl who cain’t say no,” and the one she likes better is whomever she’s with.

Of course, the men are clear about how they feel. Will Parker (Tom Holt), another cowman, wants to marry Ado Annie; Ali Hakim (Ryan Vallance), a traveling salesman, would like to share a hotel room with her but isn’t interested in commitment. And Ali is willing to bow out so she can be with Will.

Seeming to make Ado Annie’s choice further irrelevant, her father (Larry Doss) has promised her to the first man who can bring him $50 — about $1,100 in 2007 dollars. And Will has just returned from a fair in Kansas City, a place he describes in fabulously cosmopolitan terms, where he won $50 in the rodeo.

Unfortunately for Will, he spent the money on gifts for Ado Annie and her father, including what appears to be a pornographic kaleidoscope, and the deal requires cash. And as much as she likes Will, Ado Annie decides she’s leaning toward Ali enough to scheme to get her father to force him to marry her.

Laurey also has a second interested man — Jud (Richard Costa), the hired hand on her farm. Though she thinks he’s a perv for decorating his smokehouse with explicit pictures and is truly afraid of him, Laurey accepts Jud’s invitation to the box social in order to avoid Curly, the man she has conflicted feelings about. Curly manages to find another date with Gertie (Annie Ohlsen) in an obvious attempt to make Laurey jealous.

To clear her mind, Laurey buys an elixir from Ali. To get out of marrying Ado Annie, Ali buys Will’s gifts, making sure Will has $50 to spend on a bride.

At the box social, an incident during a three-legged race leads to a fight between the farmers (John Hubbard, Bob Hundhausen and Jay Straley) and the cowmen (Gareth Williams, Bill Binnewies and Dave Jordan), who agree in song they should be friends but continue fighting when the music stops. It’s resolved in time for the main event: a date auction to support the schoolhouse, for which the girls (Melissa Iida, Noriko Holt and Teri Straley) have prepared picnic baskets as stand-ins for themselves.

Will fails to realize that if he spends his money on a date with Ado Annie, he won’t have it to marry her; and penniless Curly will have difficulty raising funds to match Jud’s accumulated savings. As bidding wars over Laurey and Ado Annie’s baskets mount, much work remains to be done in making the right matches.

The show is directed by Alan Spjut, and music is provided by music director Dean Conyers, vocal director Jo Ann Rierson, Amy Hoggatt, Andrew Horath, Carolann Horath, Patrick Horath and Cindy Merchant.

The show continues through Sept. 2, with performances at 7 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and at 2 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $15 and $12 for students and seniors.