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by Matt Murray, directed by Ted Dykstra

Canadian Stage, Winter Garden Theatre, 189 Yonge Street, Toronto

December 11, 2024-January 5, 2025

“It’s a real life boogie and a real life hoedown” (“Texas Hold ’Em”, Beyoncé, 2023)

It was a joyful evening on December 11 when the latest Ross Petty panto opened in Toronto. Ross Petty’s last panto was Peter’s Final Flight in 2022. There was no panto last year. But this year Canadian Stage decided to continue Petty’s panto tradition by making the holiday panto an annual feature of its seasons. The first Canadian Stage panto (Ross Petty is Executive Producer Emeritus) is a success. The Wizard of Oz: The Toto-ly Awesome Family Musical is written by Matt Murray who wrote the previous six Ross Petty pantos and it features two panto regulars, Eddie Glen and Dan Chameroy. The cast is enthusiastic, the story is easy to follow and the show includes more audience interaction than seen in a long time.

Ross Petty has already staged two previous pantos inspired by L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz – one in 2011 and one in 2018. The second was also written by Murray and was concerned with global warming. The version he has written for the present show is more general and focusses simply on the attempt of the Wicked Witch of the West to gain power over all of Oz.

Murray’s new adaptation imagines Guelph as Kansas. As in the famous 1939 film, people Dorothy knows from her life on a farm turn up later as characters in Oz, which here is a version of Toronto called “TorOZto”. The N in the City Hall’s Toronto sign is simply knocked on its side to make a Z. Here Dorothy has supposedly hid in a dumpster which the tornado carries to TorOZto and drops on the Wicked Witch of the East. There is no Glinda, but Dorothy’s pal Plumbum has also sought shelter in the dumpster and is present in TorOZto to help. Toto, although he appears in the title, is only Dorothy’s favourite stuffed toy.

Dorothy mysteriously inherits the ruby Blundstones of the deceased Wicked Witch of the East which Nastina, the Wicked Witch of the East, covets because she needs them to climb the CN Tower, there to gain the CN Power which will allow her rule all of Oz. Murray pulls some major plot twists from his sleeve for the conclusion which is not like that of the book or the film.

The show has a particularly strong cast. Central to any panto is the villain. Ross Petty put such a strong stamp on that role that after he stopped acting, he was very difficult to replace. Then, in 2018 along came Sara-Jeanne Hosie, who wowed everyone as the villain who most closely embodies Petty’s style while making the role her own. The key to Petty’s style it that while they have outsized evil desires, they are also dimly aware that they are ridiculous. Petty and Hosie would rant, “I must have the gold, I must have the gold, I must have the gold!” with a smile somewhere between mania and self-conscious comedy.

Vanessa Sears has such a strong onstage presence that she ably fills the role of the villain. Sears plays her as if Nastina were the queen bee of the mean girls set at high school. Everyone will identify with the fashionista walk, the disdain, the haughty tone of voice. The main quality Sears lacks is Petty’s or Hosie’s dim self-awareness that they may actually look foolish. This she partially makes up for with an ideal evil witch’s laugh, though she does tend to shout much more than she needs to. The one surprise is that Murray doesn’t give Sears, acclaimed for her work in music theatre, a song as strong as the others have.

Playing Dorothy is first-time panto actor Julia Pulo, best known to Toronto audiences as Anne Boleyn for the musical Six. It is a major relief to see that Pulo can do something else besides complaining that her head’s been cut off. Pulo makes a very sympathetic Dorothy, who has just graduated from high school and doesn’t know what she wants to do. Pulo uses her strong voice to deliver a touching rendition of Billie Eilish’s 2023 song “What Was I Made For?”, a perfect choice for Dorothy’s situation. Later, she gives a rousing account of P!nk’s 2023 song “Try”.

Providing continuity between the Ross Petty-produced panto and this new Canadian Stage edition is the character of Plumbum, the daffy character Dan Chameroy introduced as one of the step-sisters in Petty’s production of Cinderella in 2008. Chameroy’s portrayal of the clownish figure who speaks in delicate confidential tones while unable to conceal her naughty desires is something that never stales. This time around, his Plumbum seems a bit more subdued than usual. Plumbum’s big song is Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” (1983), but the song doesn’t really take off until Pulo, with a voice very much like Lauper’s, takes over the vocals.

Another link between this show and the past is the presence of the ever youthful Eddie Glen. In Petty’s 2018 Wizard of Oz panto, Glen played the unhappy henchman of Sara-Jeanne Hosie’s villain. Here he plays the Scarecrow and brings out all the soulful dimness of the character. He also gets to lead off a round of Beyoncé’s 2024 hit “Texas Hold ’Em”, the song that really drove the crowd wild. Jonathan Cullen makes for a stalwart, kindly Tin Man, and Saphire Demitro is an endearing Lion who would rather cuddle than fight.

The chorus of singer/dancers numbers only four, much smaller than usual, but they make up for their numbers with their energy. Their account of Loverboy’s “Working For The Weekend” (1981) gets the show off to a buoyant start. The chorus – Jordan Bell, Andrew Broderick, Sierra Holder and Kirstyn Russelle – also play a huge range of parts from farmhands to crows to Nastina’s minions. The most trenchant of their many incarnations is as mauve-clad TorOZtonians who could care less about people in distress (like Dorothy and Co.) except perhaps to take a selfie with them.

There are two main improvements in this Canadian stage-produced panto over Petty's previous shows. One is the elimination of filmed advertisements that interrupted the flow of the action. The other is the increase in audience participation. The latter is what makes pantos such great introductions for kids to theatre. The participation in Petty’s pantos had diminished to merely booing the villain. Here, characters in the show frequently asked the advice of the children about what to do. In one interesting case, the children as a group actually lied to Nastina to help the heroes. This kind of interaction makes the children feel they have some agency in the outcome of the story. A further plus is the use of the Winter Garden Theatre, a smaller venue than the Elgin and with an fantastic interior design that is already magical.

So do go see The Wizard of Oz to celebrate the return of the large-scale panto to Toronto and to enjoy one of the best-written, best-performed pantos in recent years. We are grateful to Canadian Stage for helping this family-friendly holiday tradition continue.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: Dan Chameroy as Plumbum, Julia Pulo as Dorothy, Saphire Demitro as Lion, Jonathan Cullen as Tin Man and Eddie Glen as Scarecrow; Vanessa Sears as Nastina; Dan Chameroy as Plumbum and Julia Pulo as Dorothy. © 2024 Dahlia Katz.

For tickets visit: www.canadianstage.com.