ALW's The Wizard of Oz broadway

With any luck ...... NO!

The Cowardly Lion has always been a camp-gay figure. His tendency towards mild cross-dressing and stereotypical mannerisms, along with the association of Judy Garland with pre-Stonewall gay culture, gave rise to the term "friend of Dorothy" for gay.

The Toronto production was built to tour. It is a pretty massive show.

I know people have complained about revisal-revivals before, for "fixing" problems that aren't "there," but The Wizard Of Oz, pre-Webber, has one major problem with its musical structure- it's a play with songs, a pantomime, and not a full musical. The last song in the show is "King of the Forest," which more or less begins Act 2, Scene 2. Other than a sad reprise of "Over The Rainbow," that's it for the singing.

Webber's idea to patch the musical holes is not a bad one, and his use of reprise and motif in extending the music already in the show goes way better than his original songs do. Nonetheless, it's like patching a shirt with some identical cloth and some pieces of underwear- sure, you get a cohesive whole, but not all the patches fit the same way.

I hope not. This production takes a story that is deep, moving, and highly thematic and turns it into a theme park, bubble gum, hybrid mess. The 1987 RSC adaptation of the film, to me, is flawless. It is the version that is commonly performed in high schools and regional theatres. Instead of trimming the dialogue, it develops it further. Instead of reducing the songs, it adds dance music and wonderful orchestrations (based on the original film score). The second act opens with Optimistic Voices, then there's a 4 minute Merry Old Land of Oz, an extended King of the Forest (whereas the ALW production completely cuts the song), restores the awesomely wonderful Jitterbug number, as well as adds a perfect reprise of Over the Rainbow and Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead. Granted, the RSC version is a little lengthy, but it should be. Count me as someone who does not consider The Wizard of Oz a "kids show." Sure, kids should see it, but it should be built for adults. It's themes are so complex. I remember that the 1998 Madison Square Garden production added a reprise of Over the Rainbow for Glinda just before sending Dorothy home. I think that worked wonderfully as well. I really hope this is not the Oz production that comes to Broadway. Considering it didn't really do well in London, I can't imagine it coming to NY. The Wizard of Oz is huge here in the United States and I can't imagine many people jumping for joy at the thought of it being retooled in such a backwards way.

I LOVED the Madison Square Garden production. The sets and costumes were beautiful and I enjoyed the way they incorporated "The Jitterbug" for the Witch to sing. Eartha Kitt is terrific on the cast recording. Even though they trimmed some of the dialogue, I still think that production, for me, was the perfect example of how to do Oz on stage. That production should have been in a Broadway house instead of the enormous, charmless theatre at MSG.

I'm not a fan of the Andrew Lloyd Webber production and I will never understand why he felt the need to bastardize one of the greatest scores ever written for film or stage. My only wish is that someday some unscrupulous composer will take a look at The Phantom of the Opera and decide that it too needs a "better" opening number and write some hokey songs to fill out one of his most loved scores.

^Civic Light Opera rents out the MSG sets and costumes now. I saw a production in San Diego that utilized the MSG sets, costumes and orchestrations and was directed and choreographed by two members of the MSG tour. It was equally spectacular.

I thought that ALW would have done an pretty darn good job at "reworking" The Wizard of Oz...not really sure what happened

Not a stage tech person, but the inclined treadmills did not look like they were on tracks. They did move to different angles which may have been done with internal motors. I found these to be pointless overkill. There has to be a simpler way to indicate they are walking down the yellow brick road than walking on a treadmill that is moving around on stage.

The production makes extensive use of rear projections on a massive screen that takes up the entire back of the set and is used very well. Looks much better than the static scrims that are usually used.

The witch's castle does look like a piece that would be hard to travel with. I asked the producers of Legally Blonde why the had removed the staircase from the touring production and they said because of the difficulty moving it on trucks. The castle looks much bigger than the LB staircase, so I would be interested to see how that breaks down and assembles for a tour truck.

Is the Melody top or MUNY version the one with the talking dogs and the spaceship?

ALW should play one of the flying monkeys.

I think that Wonders of the World is a great song actually in the new show.