Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical is surely one of the best ever made.

The reason is simple, lyrics, dancing, dialogue and music fit together easily until you get a perfectly balanced classical whole.

The original story was adapted from Lyn Riggs',"Green Grow The Lilacs" a tale of young bustling stockmen struggling against equally young and bustling farmers, all of it set in the emergent state of Oklahoma. The big production number "The Farmer and the Cowmen should be Friends" sets it all out clearly although in this otherwise energetic production things can go adrift.

But there isn't a bad singing voice on stage, in fact some of them deserve the adjective superb.

Ashley Day's Curly, for example, tackling "Oh What A Beautiful Mornin" with wonderful confidence as he consolidates his love for culottes and not a cotton dress!

This particular scene has directorial elements which I cannot agree with.

The show opens famously with Aunt Eller (the peppery, but kindly Belinda Lang) churning butter. It's a great moment, it's Saturday in summer and the great Oklahoman plain stretches away to the horizon.

But Rachael Kavanaugh who directs has decided otherwise!

And so out goes the traditional butter churn, something Aunt Eller would have enjoyed and in comes a manky old 1950s cheap rubber roller mangle.

Later we get bales of straw brought in, the modern kind like oversize rolls of Andrex. Why Ms Kavanaugh? Neither of these things contribute anything, and quite frankly I wasn't the only person on Tuesday night who noticed these heavy anachronisms.

But see this production for its huge spirit, its good dancing and its charm.

When the frontier girls dream with Laurey about phantom lovers who may one day arrive, the stage lights up and when Nic Greenshields, who plays Jud, sings his soliloquy in the smoke house, the theatre concentrated and roared its applause.

Mr Greenshields is marvellous.

Runs until Saturday