The boards; a new Laurey.('Oklahoma')(The Talk of the Town)

Josefina Gabrielle, the English actress who has taken on the role of Laurey in the new Broadway production of "Oklahoma!," could well be Laurey No. 30,000. The show is probably the most frequently produced musical ever, and has been performed in countries all over the world, including Iceland, Hungary, and Israel, since the original opened here fifty-nine years ago, in 1943.

"I love being Laurey -- she's a classic, like Shakespeare," Miss Gabrielle said, in her trained, clipped accent, sitting in her dressing room at the Gershwin the other night. "Trevor Nunn, our director, takes things so deep. I was encouraged to make Laurey a young girl with adolescent emotions that she doesn't fully understand -- a kind of tomboy becoming a woman. And to make her a stimulating match for Curly, like a Beatrice-and-Benedick relationship."

She had just finished the second of her Saturday performances, and she was unfazed and unspent. She had quickly dispensed with her Oklahoma accent and her curtain-call costume -- a pink suit with a bustle and pale-lilac-colored lace-ups -- and changed into Gap jeans and a black silk top with bell sleeves. She was hungry after the six-hour stretch onstage, so she headed to a nearby restaurant for a plate of pasta. (She is the only professional Laurey on record who not only sings and acts but also dances her own dream-ballet sequence.)

Miss Gabrielle's home is in Northwest London, where she was born and reared by her mother, a high-school teacher. When she was seventeen, after fourteen years of ...