Reviews 2013
Reviews 2013
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music by Harold Arlen, lyrics by E.Y. Harburg, with additional music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Tim Rice, directed by Jeremy Sams
Mirvish Productions, Ed Mirvish Theatre, Toronto
January 13-August 18, 2013
“Dreams That You Dare to Dream Come True”
Yesterday saw the North American premiere of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new production of The Wizard of Oz. Costing in excess of £5 million ($ 7.9 million Canadian), the new production will likely be the most spectacular stage version of the beloved 1939 movie that you will ever see. The show, featuring rewritten dialogue and new songs by Lloyd Webber with lyrics by Tim Rice alongside the old favourites, has both plusses and minuses. The biggest plus is the massive talent of the all-Canadian cast. The biggest minus is that Lloyd Webber’s adaptation that adds nothing useful to the story. Rather than helping us get closer to the characters, the elaborate production seems to distance us from them.
For many people the 1939 film of The Wizard of Oz is their favourite movie of all time. The new adaptation of the musical’s book by Lloyd Webber, Rice and director Jeremy Sams seems to recognize this by transferring many notable features of the movie to the stage. Just as the movie begins in black and white and changes to colour once Dorothy arrives in Oz, the musical imitates this change. Set and costume designer Robert Jones has created a Kansas in sepia tones and wide vistas that is really quite beautiful. Oz, on the other hand, may be in colour but the colours are garish and oddly the space on the large stage of the Ed Mirvish Theatre seems cramped with the accumulation of flats representing flowers and shrubbery.
Given that the Lloyd Webber, Rice and Sams are adapting a movie for the stage one might think that they would devise theatrical means to simulate the special effects of the movie. But no, that is not the case. To show the tornado that whisks Dorothy and Toto from Kansas to Oz we watch a film created by Jon Driscoll projected onto a screen in front to the stage. As in the movie we see a cow fly by and Miss Gulch riding her bicycle, but you can’t help wondering why you have to watch a third-rate film version of a scene that is absolutely perfect in the classic movie. The new tornado is rather unusual in that it ejects Dorothy’s house into outer space with Earth (or is it an alternate Earth?) in the distance before dropping her into Oz. It’s a bit of sci-fi that doesn’t chime well with the fairy-tale-like fantasy of the story.
There are other oddities in the staging. The spiralling Yellow Brick Road turns out to be an uphill one-way Yellow Brick treadmill. That’s fine when the characters are all going in one direction, but not fine when they arrive since they have to turn around to go back down the low end of the treadmill to get off. The worst staging error is the scene where Dorothy throws a bucketful of water on the Wicked Witch of the West. It should be clear that she is trying to douse the fire that is burning the Scarecrow and only soaks the Witch by accident. In the extremely awkward way Sams has staged it, Dorothy throws the water directly at the Witch who is standing at a 45º angle from where the Scarecrow is. It is still supposed to be accidental, but it certainly doesn’t look that way and the water never reaches the Scarecrow’s arm where the flames mysteriously go out.
Robert Jones’s costumes largely follow the movie with some notable exceptions. The Munchkins are no longer in multiple colours with the men in shorts and striped stockings. Instead, Jones has made them all look like blue Delft figurines. The inhabitants of Oz are dressed in styles of the 1920s, costumes not at all as imaginative as the Ozians wear in the Stephen Schwartz musical Wicked. The most bizarre change is the costume for the Cowardly Lion. Rather than the comfortably baggy outfit Bert Lahr wore in the film, Jones has tried to simulate what a lion would like walking on its hind legs, except that he has given the Lion a tail that is far too long and remains erect throughout the show with its tassel-like end dangling over the Lion’s head. This not only looks ridiculous (and painful) but prevents the Lion from using his tail as a prop.
The least effective aspect of the new production is Arlene Phillips’ unimaginative choreography. Because the show has an ensemble who play Kansas folk, the Munchkins, the Winkies (i.e., the Witch’s Guards), and the Ozians, there are no little people specifically hired to play the Munchkins. To suggest their shortness, Phillips has them walk and dance bent over as if they all had back problems or osteoporosis. The Witch’s minions appear for a dance sequence without their long Cossack coats, but what Phillips devises looks rather too much like a dance number in Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” video. Curiously, the Wicked Witch speaks of how the four travellers will wish they could stop dancing. This sounds like a lead-in to the “Jitterbug” sequence that was dropped from the movie. Phillips does give the foursome some awkward lurching about even though the adaptors – unlike the Young People’s Theatre production in 2007 – have also dropped the “Jitterbug” number from the score. Instead, of adding new music, why not figure out, as YPT did, how to make the original but unused music work?
Even if we can’t be enthusiastic about the new adaptation, we can be enthusiastic about the cast. I don’t approve of gimmicks like choosing a lead for a show through a television contest. The show’s director, I should think, would know who would suit a role best. Nevertheless, Danielle Wade does an excellent job. She has a voice that combines the timbre of a young girl’s voice with the fullness of a mature woman and therefore is really right for Dorothy. She tends to be relentlessly perky and never sounds the deeper emotions of fear and worry that Judy Garland could – but then, who has ever been able to communicate such a mixture of strength and vulnerability since?
A major plus is Cedric Smith as Professor Marvel/The Wizard. He is clearly a con man in the Kansas role without the fussiness (fun as it is) of Frank Morgan. Polysyllabic words and Latin phrases roll off his tongue as he checks to make sure no one knows he’s faking. Despite the fairly hideous projection of his as The Wizard, he has the booming voice of authority.
In contrast, Robin Evan Willis acts and sings Glinda with a lovely cultured voice and diction rather like the young Julie Andrews. Billie Burke made Glinda seem slightly batty around the edges. Evans doesn’t aim for that and instead makes Glinda the only completely calm, sane resident of Oz. It’s just too bad the production couldn’t figure out how to give her a floating bubble.
Of Dorothy’s three travelling companions, Jamie McKnight comes off best as the Scarecrow. A former member of the Canadian Tenors, he has a strong singing voice and is also a fine actor and physical comedian. He makes his character the most endearing of the three because he shows us how kind-hearted and fragile he is. Mike Jackson makes a good Tin Man, but the adaptation gives him very little to do. Sams has decided to give him tap shoes but a man made of tin is the least likely to have the flexibility to use them.
As the Cowardly Lion, Lee MacDougall will never displace Bert Lahr and the adaptation takes his character in a different, offensive direction. Since the story refers to the Lion as a “sissy” and a “coward”, Lloyd Webber, Rice and Sams have decided that he must be gay. Sams has MacDougall camp up the Lion’s actions (the permanently erect tail doesn’t help) and make anachronistic puns. When it snows he says he’s “The Lion in Winter”. When he sleeps he says “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”. This is as witty as the new dialogue gets. When he first meets the Wizard, he says he’s a “friend of Dorothy” (i.e. antiquated queer slang for a gay person). Are the adaptors trying to be inclusive? I don’t think so. Otherwise, they would have colour-blind casting of the principals as did the Young People’s Theatre production. First of all, gay people identify with Dorothy, not the Lion, in her yearning for a place where “dreams that you dare to dream Really do come true”. Second, identifying the Cowardly Lion as gay reinforces the negative stereotype of gays as cowards. Third, if the adaptors were really interested in the character, why did they excise the Lion’s song in the movie, “If I Were King of the Forest”?
From the very beginning of the new adaptation we can sense something is not right. The adaptors are over-intent on making sure that we know that Miss Gulch, Professor Marvel, Hunk, Hickory and Zeke will all appear as characters in Oz later on. The movie allowed us to make the association ourselves. Do the adaptors not think audiences of today are smart enough to do so, too? Thus begins the process of over-emphasis that characterizes the whole production. The adaptors think they somehow need to pound the familiar story home, but that effort actually pushes us away from the story rather than drawing us in. I left feeling proud at how brilliantly the cast performed but unhappy that the showcase for their talent was so crass and gaudy.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: (top) Face of Cedric Smith, Danielle Wade, Jamie McKnight, Lee MacDougall and Mike Jackson; (middle) Robin Evan Willis as Glinda; (bottom) Lisa Horner as the Wicked Witch of the West. ©2013 Cylla von Tiedemann.
2013-01-14
The Wizard of Oz