"Oh Corona!" - "Oklahoma!" adapted by the Marsh Family

It’s been a weird start to 2022 for us, with lots of anxiety and uncertainty about the impact of the Omicron variant which is hamstringing UK healthcare at the moment – even while other parts of life such as school and football and work seem to be ploughing on regardless. We decided to return to musicals and something of a family classic – which was not a good fit earlier in the pandemic – and see if we could make it work to reflect that dissonance at the moment.

So here’s our parody of the relentlessly upbeat musical show number, the title track from Rodgers & Hammerstein’s wonderful Oklahoma! It opened on Broadway in 1943, and we've adapted it with some half-hearted American accents and bad faux-western dress that are often hallmarks of UK productions of the show.

The original musical (and play) told of a central character torn between a complicated self-denying happy-go-lucky half-dreamed optimism and a sinister and frightening alternative lurking in the outbuildings. So that’s 2022 in a nutshell.

P.S. Please note there is a rude piece of spelling at the very end of the song in case small ears are listening. We decided (as in a couple of other instances) that strong circumstances and feelings warrant occasional expletives.

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If anyone's confused by a couple of the topical UK references, then we should probably explain that there is currently a senior civil servant leading an investigation into parties that occurred at Downing Street in 2020 - in contravention of the strict lockdown rules that had been imposed on the rest of us in the country. And in recent weeks, the army has been deployed to help assist parademics and hospital staff and vaccination clinics cope with the shortages and difficulties caused by the Omicron variant - of which there have been over 150,000 cases daily during/since the holidays. We're all hoping that the worst of the wave might be receding in the days and weeks to come, to bring some respite, esp. for those on the frontline.

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If you like what we do, then please consider supporting us on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/marshfamilysongs

And huge thanks as ever to our existing patrons, who have given us the confidence and support to keep going in 2022, including the following "Howlers":

Andy Riches Carol Leff Chris Redwood Cliff Hope David Patrao Derrick Brown Jenny Pontin John McD Grandad Juan Antonio Ramírez Paul Ballinger Howe Milford Family Scott Feinstein Stephanie Lloyd