Hi! Please tell me more about Damon Daunno's Curly because I've only seen Arthur Darvill's!
omg yes okay. he is sooo so good, pitch perfect casting, to the point where i wonder if the show would have taken off as much as it did if he were not the face of the show when he was
like for one thing we all know damon daunno is good looking and we all know he has an incredible voice, and both those things do definitely add up to make his curly so great. but there's also something about the way he plays the character that makes me go nuts. like he is an incredibly loveable and captivating guy for the first hour of the show, with this sweet, easygoing, teasing but not immune to being teased back attitude that is just. so charming. it's hard not to fall in love with him in the beginning. and then damon's curly is someone who knows what he's doing, all his choices are deliberate, though they're sometimes (often) made up on the fly, consequences be damned. and that comes through when he's sweet with laurey, and it comes through when he's being threatening with jud. it's kind of amazingly disorienting when you get to the smokehouse and you hear him talk and sing, cause his mannerism is totally different, except it's not, it's the same charming guy, but he just isn't being so sweet anymore. it's frightening to see that side of him come out when you thought you had him figured out already. he's charming, for better and for worse.
and i think the combo of damon's performance revealing that dark side of curly's personality with how attractive/charming damon is as a person (and how lovely his voice is) make for a fascinating interpretation of the character. i've talked about it in other posts before but in comparing his curly to sean grandillo on the tour, i was really struck by how...abrasive/unlikeable other curlys are to me? and yet damon's curly walks such a fine line between innocent and guilty that, even watching him do all this threatening and violent stuff, even when he kills a man, i still found myself liking him, and feeling some kind of sympathy for him. without absolving him of his guilt. he's a complex man, infectiously charming and loveable, and frightening at the same time, but then he sings a bit or gets that sad puppy dog look in his eye again or smiles just right and you can't help but still love him, even while knowing exactly who he is and what he's capable of.
and imo the tension inherent to the "protagonist is demonstrably terrible, but the audience still can't help but like him anyway, but by the end they see him in a new light and are more wary now than before" vibe of damon's curly is exactly what the show is about. and i think it takes a very skilled and particular actor not just to pull that off but to do it well enough to carry a show as bold as this from workshop to off broadway to broadway (and then beyond). i think sexy oklahoma, conceptually, is a HARD sell, in hindsight; you need a very particular curly to make it work, to strike the right balance of "the point is he's a monster you never realized before now" and "but we still love him." and honestly i have yet to see or hear another performance that i think tops his (maybe one or two that come close or match it, but nothing surpassed yet).
obviously all of the above is just my opinion (and a three-year-old one at that, since i only saw the show with him once in 2019)!! but as someone who's been thinking Extensively about this show and that performance for the past three years i can say he really is definitive as curly for me. incredibly charming, for good and for bad.
also he's the only one with actually curly hair so i mean what more could you ask for
