The last time Eli Budwill was in “Oklahoma!” he was in Oklahoma.

That was August, at Discoveryland in Sand Springs, Okla. — designated the “National Home of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s ‘Oklahoma!’” — and Budwill was wrapping up a summerlong run as Curly, the singing cowboy.

“It’s been a tradition for 33 years,” he says. “It’s an outdoor theater with a huge concrete stage. There were real horses. I rode a horse onstage and sang ‘Oh What a Beautiful Morning’ on the back of a horse. And we had real guns.”

Starting Saturday night, Budwill steps into Curly’s boots again in “Oklahoma!” at Yorktown Stage, in a run that extends to Nov. 30.

There are no horses in director-choreographer Greg Baccarini’s production, but there are 25 adults and 21 children in the cast of the Rodgers & Hammerstein classic about a cowboy, a girl and the farmhand who threatens to keep them apart.

Danbury native Colleen Gallagher, a recent Manhattanville College graduate, plays Laurey and giggles when she’s reminded of the classic songs she’ll sing. A favorite is “People Will Say We’re in Love.”

“You have to hand it to Rodgers & Hammerstein,” she says. “They certainly knew how to write a love song.”

Playing Jud Fry is Billy Reilly, a fourth-grade teacher at Edgewood School in Scarsdale, whom Yorktown audiences may remember as Captain von Trapp in last season’s “The Sound of Music.” He says he expects plenty of his students to trek up to Yorktown to see the show.
“I’ve already warned them that I die in the end,” he says.

Budwill learned to rope and ride as a kid in Alberta, Canada — where that wind that sweeps down the plain starts — but didn’t encounter the classic piece of American musical theater history until he was a student at the American Musical Dramatic Academy, near Lincoln Center.

Budwill got the part as any modern cowboy would.

“I didn’t really audition,” he says. “I auditioned through email. I sent them videos of me singing ‘Surrey with a Fringe On Top’ and they loved it.”

From June through August, he played Curly on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and was in “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,” on Thursdays and Fridays.

“We couldn’t do the shows during the day, because it was too hot,” he says. “So, no matinees. It was great.”

Apparently, those Oklahomans liked what they saw, too: Budwill has been invited back to play Curly next summer, too.

“Oklahoma” opens Saturday at Yorktown Stage, 1974 Commerce St., Yorktown Heights. Performances are Nov. 15, 22 and 29 at 7 p.m.; Nov. 16, 23 and 30 at 2 p.m.; Thanksgiving Friday (Nov. 28) at 2 p.m. and Nov. 29 at 2 p.m. $25, $23 for Yorktown residents, $21 for students and seniors, $19 for children under 12. 914-962-0606. www.yorktownstage.org