The WIZ LIVE : post your comments and thoughts live during the show here — Page 8

In all the interviews I've seen of actors who work with Kenny Leon, they say that he is a tough director and will push you to your limit. I think that showed tonight.

Honestly, the story of "The Wizard of Oz" has never done much for me, in any version. I don't know why, it just bores me. But the performances were fantastic tonight and made it worth watching. I don't know what the old script was like -- this was my first time seeing "The Wiz" -- but this script didn't bother me at all.

What it needed was the inventiveness of the original Geoffrey Holder direction and George Faision Choreography. In the original, the road danced... the tornado was a combination of dancers and swirling curtain. All this choreography looked alike and these live shows continue to be overall disappointing.The original had more ethno centric jokes that took it in a original different direction than the Wizard Of Oz movie: this took us back to almost the movie making it more of a children's show. Making it a why bother doing it? I also missed Mabel King and Clarice Taylor.

Overall disappointing with some highlights which included a wonderful Uzo Aduba as Glinda, the tin man and Stephanie Mills.

"Why would they let a 61 year old White, Jewish Man write the book to an all black musical that they were trying to make relevant to today's youth?"

what does Jewish have to do with it?

Anyone to watch it online yet? I didn't record it.

gypsy101 said: "Musical Master said: "There is not a Carrie Underwood or Christopher Walken performance in the entire show, everyone has been wonderfully cast who can act and sing."

I think Common was the weakest actor of the night.

behindthescenes2, how can you say that about the vocals?? Some of this singing was fantastic.

"I say it because you could hardly hear them in the lower ranges and Dorothy had pitch problems. You could hear them because the sound man turned up the volume. In an actual theatre - it would be hard for them to get across the orchestra even with a mic." For me the singing wasn't organic to the characters they portrayed - artificial and disconnection ruled. When Evilene sings - it should be scary and thrilling at the same time - it wasn't. She was exotic looking and kind of beautiful but not scary. "You can't win" was a struggle for the scarecrow. You could see these people working their behinds off and ALL of their work and struggle and technique was on display - it didn't flow, there was no ease or comfort in the songs from the dialogue or monologue to the music - it should be one and it wasn't. I am not saying that I don't enjoy these actors in other media, I do, but you know it takes a different sort of actor and singer to do continuous live performance and sustain the moment all the way through and it is tough to do that for those who can like Audra, Chenoweth and others. The way it is done for TV , cut up for commercials is unfair to the performers and the musical. The performers here never got a chance to get their hooks into the run of the show to be able to continue the character's journey - make it a complete whole performace from the intro to the end (the beginning - the growth "the middle" and then the end." Their inexperience showed. Again, it wasn't the travesity of Sound of Music, but it could have been so much more.

Any where to watch online?

Harvey had zero qualifications for this, and really. Does it need to be explained that if the goal is to "update" within a particular demographic group, you probably want somebody who has any foot in the world you're going for? The updates were utterly painful. The iPad? The Spice Girls? Eddie Murphy? It's like we went further back in time as the night went on and topical references have NO PLACE in this world anyway. The unconvincing, totally unnecessary, shallow attempts at thematic work that were awkwardly pinned onto the story were even worse. I will say the encounter with the "mother" was kind of interesting and a chilling idea, but I'm not sure what it was doing in that moment?

The show succeeded in spite of every new spoken word.

Updated On: 12/3/15 at 11:34 PM

I didn't see Sound of Music and I tuned in and out of Peter Pan, so I can't really say this was the best presentation so far, but I did enjoy it and managed to stay tuned from start to finish. I still feel all bubbly and can't stop singing "Ease on Down" and "Brand New Day". Whether that's the three glasses of wine or the show itself talking…

The format (endless commercials, no audience, questionable camera work) makes these live musicals come off kind of flat. They seem to just chug along, from one scene and one plot point to the next, ambling towards their respective (anticlimactic) conclusions with no rise in tension. That's my main gripe with NBC's annual foray into stage theatre.

But this, atleast, was an improvement. The cast was wonderful, the additions to the orchestrations were fun and the design was absolutely gorgeous. Hopefully it keeps getting better from here.

Updated On: 12/3/15 at 11:35 PM

I found it really enjoyable. Of course it wasn't perfect, but it was the best of the 3 recent shows now. I definitely wanted to see more of the Tornado dancers and had that longer. At first I thought Shanice Williams was going to be the weak link in acting. But, she improved greatly after the first commercial break. My favorites were David Alan Grier, Mary J. Blige, and Uzo Aduba. I cannot wait to buy the music from this.

I think the reason why there were so many commercial breaks because unlike the last two shows with multiple sets, I feel like this time by them using only one set they needed he extra time to change it and rearrange the yellow brick road in a new formation.

I don't know The Wiz as a show very well at all (the one time I saw it live was a probably illegally truncated version with about 10 white preteens), but what I suspected were newer lines from Fierstein really stuck out way too much. It was almost on a level with Something Rotten in its try-hard-ness. But the overall charm and talent were there, and I had a great time.

I think there were a lot of commercials because a large audience was anticipated.