THE WIZ: 2015 NBC LIVE MUSICAL — Page 64

Jane2 said: "Shanice is perfect. The scarecrow - a little unattractive, to me."

lol i was just saying what a shame to hide his beautiful face behind what reminds me of a horror movie mask.

He died in the tornado. RIP.

Only got to see Stephanie sing and the tornado. The tornado camerawork was a little weird and it seemed shorter than I remember. Also did not like that they replaced those great vocals during the tornado with a Cirque sounding vocalist and not the same notes sung as in the show. I really like the look of the show though.

jasonf said: "I just realized --- where's Toto?

"

apparently in the Wiz, Toto doesn't travel to Oz with Dorothy. He greets her when she comes back "Home" to Kansas.

Although in the godawful movie Diana had Toto follow her so ... eh.?

@CindersGolightly : LOL

Updated On: 12/4/15 at 01:49 AM

I do not think that these presentations have benefitted from being live. I think they should rehearse more and take more time adapting the camera work so it is all less awkward. This one looked so much like a stage they might as well of had a live audience. A friend of mine was likening it to Sesame Street and I think it was because the stage was so cramped with little depth and there were such gaps between lines. I think the girl playing Dorothy has a good voice but she seems to be a very inexperienced actress. The direction I think is much weaker in this production than the previous 2.

All in all, it was a successful evening, fueled (as I hoped it would be) by the talented cast of performers. Everyone sang really well (especially for a live show), and the acting was solid too. The book changes worked okay, with none of them being real "improvements" over the original book to the stage show. At least they didn't detract from the story, with one exception that was a "lesser choice" (by far). To have Dorothy want to go home to Omaha instead of Kansas, then choose Kansas at the end because "that's where the heart is" muddled the original message from L. Frank Baum (and the original stage show of The Wiz).

I put an anecdote on this thread a few pages back that proved to be emotional for some who read it and commented on it. It was a quote from Hamilton Meserve (Margaret Hamilton's son) when I first met him while we were "special guests" together at an Oz convention. I will re-quote it now because it's the reason I feel they missed the point (and the power) of the original ending:

He said, "You know the real fairy tale of this story is the ending. Many of us leave our simple, ordinary early lives to have big adventures in the world. But we can never truly go home again after that. We aren't the same people anymore, and our homes and lives have changed. In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy gets to go home again. That's the real fantasy. That's why this story speaks so emotionally to us."

The fairy tale part is the ending, not Dorothy's journey. But that's what resonates with us. Dorothy gets to have extraordinary adventures in strange new places, then return to the home she knows and loves at the end. As adults in this world, none of us can really do that. We change. The world around us changes. Our homes change. We can't go back.

In this revised book, Harvey Fierstein understands that, too. But instead of saying "Yes, but this is a fairy tale, and dreams come true in fairy tales," he decides to give us a dose of practical reality instead. Dorothy can't go back to her home in Omaha, because her parents are dead, and it's not the same place, and she's not the same person and never will be. So she "chooses" a home in Kansas with Aunt Em, who loves her, because "that's where the heart is." Fine, but we all get to do that, throughout our lives. We all get to decide where "home" really is. But Harvey, you just stripped the original fairy tale of its power and its dream and its magical ending.

Dorothy gets to go home again, when in reality, none of us get to do that.

It's like changing the end to Cinderella and having her choose not to marry the prince and live happily ever after, because that doesn't happen in real life. If the "simple girl" marries the handsome prince, they usually divorce, or she's a fish out of water, or he cheats, or she becomes tainted and spoiled and miserable. There is always a compromise for "marrying the handsome prince." You don't get to stay the same and be the same person living "happily ever after." But folks, Cinderella is a fairy tale, and she gets to live happily ever after.

Back to "The Wiz," I liked two of the dances a lot. The Emerald City Ballet and Brand New Day (thank God they dropped the "dancing candy-corn" costumes). The rest of the dances were subpar to the original by far. The Tornado, the Poppies, and the Flying Monkeys sequences were all hot messes and surprisingly short. I missed the balletic dances from the original stage production. These new sequences were muddled and not really choreographed as much as staged for flying rigs and tumblers. I missed the strong, elegant, classy, athletic, and imaginative dances from Broadway. But the Emerald City "vogue" number and Brand New Day were quite good.

Another disappointment were the Ease On Down the Road sequences. They lacked the real power of the originals with the four dancers as the Yellow Brick Road. Those sequences leapt out each time and raised the energy level of the whole show, but when you have just two or three people on stage trying to dance and "wow" us singing that song, it just doesn't work nearly as well. They were fine, not bad, but nowhere near what they were in the original show.

Back to the cast ... Shanice Williams really carried the show and did it beautifully. Her Dorothy had bite and "gumption" and strength ... but before some of you say "that was an improvement," IT WAS THERE ALL ALONG. You either have short-term memory loss, or you never saw the MGM movie or read the original story. Dorothy always spoke up to adversity and her enemies even when she was scared. Remember Judy Garland telling Miss Gulch, "No, no, I won't let you take him, you wicked old witch!" Or how about when she slaps the lion who is attacking them and says, "Shame on you!" or when the lion faints during their audience with the Wizard, and she says to the floating horrible head, "You ought to be ashamed of yourself! Frightening him like that when he came to you for help!" Dorothy was ALWAYS bold and brave and spoke her mind. She is that way in the original story too, so this is NOT a change or an improvement. But Shanice did a beautiful job of capturing that same spirit and drive that Dorothy has always had. Her voice was fantastic and her acting was very good as well, and she proved to be a very competent dancer with what she was given to do. She was a real "discovery" last night and a great choice.

I particularly loved her work at the beginning with Stephanie Mills, who is a terrific actress and singer as well, and I wish she would work more! They had great chemistry together.

The rest of the cast was solid too. I'm glad both Queen Latifah and Mary J. Blige upped their energy levels and focus (from what I had seen in the rehearsal clips) and they rose to the occasion. Elijah Kelley did surprisingly well considering that makeup did him no favors. It still was fairly repulsive. Ne-Yo and David were also wonderful. Elijah and David were also two that consistently got the timing right on the "jokes" an humor throughout. I realize without a live audience's reaction, "comedy" can fall flat, but some of that was due to the book changes, and some was also due to the missed timing on the humor. Elijah, David, and also Amber seemed to have good comedy timing.

I'm glad they changed Dorothy's jacket color and the Winkie's dance costumes, and Glinda's wig. All were last-minute improvements over what I had previously seen.

The new song is forgettable and clumsy (really awkward lyrics and rhymes, and a boring melody), but the cast sold it well despite its shortcomings. I was glad they included the Wiz's two songs, but sorry they cut Who Do You Think You Are? and A Rested Body Is a Rested Mind, which made Glinda's part even smaller than it already is. She sang If You Believe beautifully though with those same deep, rich tones that Dee Dee Bridgewater had in the original. I love (and miss) smokey alto voices in musical theatre. We have way too many shrieking/belting sopranos now. That's all well and good, but those low alto notes are just as impressive to me as any belted high note. Maybe even more so.

All in all, it was a very good show. Better than Sound of Music and Peter Pan. It wasn't "The Wiz" I remember from Geoffrey Holder and George Faison. But it was closer than I thought they would get. And I was entertained far more often last night than I was disappointed.

best12bars:

Aside from the whole Omaha/Kansas plotline and ending, which didn't bother me at all, I agree with your great review! Highlights were Brand New Day and the Emeralk City Vogue dance numbers. I rewatched those several times. I agree Shanice did an impressive job leading the cast. She's 18? 19?.....amazing. I loved DAG as the lion, he really knows how to deliver a line, and has great pipes too. Ne Yo's " If I Could Feel" was superb, and I enjoyed Queen Latifah as The Wiz, but not so much her song.

Couldn't watch it live, but it's so much nicer fast-forwarding through commercials anyway. The ending seemed a little abrupt-- Why didn't they have Dorothy meeting with the farmhands again? -- oh well, it was very entertaining all around and MUCH better than the god-awful Peter Pan from last year.

There were no farmhand counterparts in the original stage show either. They were added for this version.

I like Best12bars' reminder that Dorothy Gale has ALWAYS been a kick ass child. The added stuff about Kansas vs. Omaha didn't really add much except some muddled stuff about how she needs to appreciate her home, or something, which is not the issue in the MGM Classic, as Dorothy's decision to run away from home is neatly countered by Professor Marvel, when his fake crystal ball session reminds Dorothy of Aunt Em's care for her -- she's already learned that There's No Place Like Home before the cyclone. I'm not sure that changing that adds much to the proceedings at all.

And at no time was I ever led to believe that THE WIZ's Dorothy was even remotely afraid of The Wizard or The Wicked Witch, especially as embodied by Queen Latifah and Ms. Blige, who have to be the least imposing performers ever to assume these roles. Latifah seemed downright amateurish in her first big scene, only coming to life in the song before the balloon took off, it was like she got a shot of coffee during the costume change. And Ms. Blige brought some energy to "No Bad News" but her Wickedness was totally generic -- there was no real spark to it at all, just a lot of stalking and shouting, there was no extra edge to lift it above the merely serviceable, and she wasn't alone -- has anyone ever done less with the role of the Cowardly Lion than Mr. Grier?

Merely serviceable -- I'm afraid I'm going to have to say that's my final verdict about the whole shebang.

Updated On: 12/4/15 at 12:11 PM

The ratings are in and it bet Peter Pan and came in a few numbers below the sound of music,but over the show had good ratings!!!

http://tvline.com/2015/12/04/the-wiz-live-ratings-nbc/

LOL! Very true. And that stuff about her backstory ... I didn't even see that in the show. A prisoner of her own jail, etc.

I, unfortunately, never got to see the original Geoffrey Holder production, but I did catch an excellent production of this show at Baltimore's Center Stage in 2010 (not too far from the Morris Mechanic Theatre where the original version premiered in 1974) that took the piece at face value and didn't make any attempt to modernize it. I thought this broadcast was unequivocally the best performed out of Peter Pan Live! and Sound of Music Live!, but it also makes a good case for abandoning this format for one that incorporates a live audience.

I don't really mind the commercials. After all, most of America was probably first exposed to the 1939 film through yearly television airings. They just need to figure out more natural places to break up the action, because this seemed a bit unnatural. My main issue is that I don't really see any benefit from airing these musicals live without any audience response to alleviate the airless, artificial, slightly dead quality these productions have had. It's like back when the Les Miz film was released and Tom Hooper and the cast were making such a big hooplah over the "We're singing it live!!" aspect. In the end, the live approach added almost nothing and just introduced unnecessary limitations into the process. You just can't capture the electricity of live theatre without one-half of the whole equation, which is the audience interaction.

Anyway, back to the production itself... I like that they remained mostly faithful to the original book, from what I remember of it. But Fierstein's interpolations were REALLY noticeable. They added nothing, jarred with the rest of the book and, as best12bars wrote, muddled the simplicity of the story. That said, they weren't too intrusive and I hope they can just be thrown out for the stage revival.

The cast was mostly excellent. Stephanie Mills managed to rally more heartfelt pathos and genuineness in just one short scene than either the rest of this production, or anything in either of the other two live musicals, save maybe for Audra McDonald's "Climb Every Mountain." Just having her be a part of this production brought some "heart" to what otherwise may have felt kind of perfunctory. I liked what I saw of the tornado, but it was the first example of the crappy camerawork that would annoy me for the rest of the night. The last two live musicals seemed to have more deliberately designed camerawork. Here, as others have said, it felt like an afterthought.

Amber Riley killed her scene and song. I was really impressed. I initially felt she was too young for Addaperle, but she made it work. Shanice Williams took some time for me to warm up to. I still maintain Dorothy works better when played by a younger actress, but upon watching the "Making of..." special, I can see why they chose her. She has an innocence and sweetness to her, which was lacking in the other girls they had considered, who seemed too modern and edgy. Her energy flagged towards the beginning, but picked up once she met the Scarecrow and fended the crows off.

I miss "I Was Born on the Day Before Yesterday." I don't mind "You Can't Win", though, and Elijah Kelley was excellent (although I totally agree with everyone who said his costume was scary and off-putting). I may be reading into this too much, but I detected some undertones of the black experience of disenfranchisement by "the System" and the dominant culture in "You Can't Win." Not sure if that was intentional or not.

Ne-Yo was excellent on both his songs, although I agree with whoever mentioned he mumbled through some of his lines. His costume was probably a huge factor, though. The poor guy looked to be struggling under 200 lbs. of face paint and prosthetics. "What Would I Do" is probably my second favorite song in this show after "Home" and his performance was moving. I can't imagine anyone other than David Alan Grier doing as well with this incarnation of the Cowardly Lion. He was pitch-perfect casting. "Be a Lion" was excellent.

One thing I will say is that the transitions from book-scene into the songs was awkward for almost every song. I don't know if it was because the orchestra was prerecorded this time, but there was always an awkward pause or two before breaking into a song. The new song, which I've already forgotten the name of, did indeed feel out-of-place and like it was from a completely different musical, and didn't seem to have much relation to the events on stage. I remember the melody, though, so I guess it might be a suitable earworm to win some iTunes downloads.

Mary J. Blige did much better than I expected. She was no Mabel King (no one can really conjure up that larger-than-life performance) or (from what I've seen from Youtube videos) Tichina Arnold, or even Gwen Stewart (who doubled up as Addaperle and Evilene in the Center Stage production I saw), but she was quite serviceable, even if her acting was very one-note. She was fully committed, and her speech to Dorothy about who was really the evil one there was actually very well delivered. Queen Latifah as the Wiz was also better than I expected from the previews and "Making of.." special. I also noticed they referred to The Wiz as both "he" and "she" in one scene, but I'm not sure if it was a mistake or they actually intended it. "So You Wanted to Meet the Wizard" was fun, although I thought she lacked the energy to pull off "Y'all Got It!" but was saved by the ensemble. I feel like they relied too closely on the film's staging of "Everybody Rejoice." From what I remember of the stage version, the lead up to that song was somewhat different with a "Hallelujah" type chorus happening between the Evilene's demise and "Brand New Day."

However, one thing I will say the film version may have gotten right: the pacing. Both here and in the Center Stage production, I remember feeling like the action felt EXTREMELY condensed. The book consists of a handful of scenes with pretty natural pacing (Munchkinland, the Scarecrow and crows, Oz, the meetings with the Wiz), and then it barrels through everything else at the speed of light. We barely get any time in Kansas before the cyclone hits, Dorothy meets her three companions in such quick succession, then kills Evilene almost as soon as we meet her, and Glinda kind of just appears for no reason. Fierstein seems to have attempted to remedy a bit of that (albeit, with additions that neither added contemporary relevance to the story, nor drew from Baum's original story), but I guess it wasn't enough, especially considering they interpolated a pointless song and cut a couple of original songs that would have evened out the pacing a bit more.

tl;dr: I liked it. There were a lot of problems, but the cast saved it.

Updated On: 12/4/15 at 01:30 PM

doodlenyc said: "The original stage ending (and tour and '84 revival) had only Toto greet Dorothy at the end of "Home". I assume costuming was a big reason for that, but I also remember that one pro tour I saw had the same actress play Aunt Em and Glinda....was that the original tour?

"

The tour doubled those parts. And actually Dee Dee Bridgewater (Glinda) was also Aunt Em's understudy, so she might have gone on as both roles on Broadway if Tasha Thomas was ever out of the show.

EDIT: By the way, Glinda's original understudy was Phylicia Rashad.

Updated On: 12/4/15 at 01:42 PM