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

[RW3]

Posted: 12/3/15 at 11:12pm

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.

[CurtainsUpat8]

Posted: 12/3/15 at 11:14pm

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?

[MCfan2]

Posted: 12/3/15 at 11:15pm

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. 

[Scarywarhol]

Posted: 12/3/15 at 11:16pm

His work with the cast clearly paid off, yeah. There are even visible examples. Mary J. Blige seemed totally lost in promos and rehearsal footage as of last week. And tonight she was maybe not nuanced, but she was totally committed and working hard at a specific thing, and it played very well.

[goldenboy]

Posted: 12/3/15 at 11:18pm

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.

[disneybroadwayfan22]

Posted: 12/3/15 at 11:18pm

Well, NBC just made up for these last two years!

Not one weak link in the cast. Everyone was excellent and a star is born in Shanice Williams. But, yeah, the new book was pretty bad. The "He's the Wiz" scene was really cringeworthy with the dialogue (The iPad? Really?) and some of the newer lines didn't work. I hope this book doesn't transfer over to Broadway. 

[Jane2]

Posted: 12/3/15 at 11:20pm

"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?

[musicaltheatreman2]

Posted: 12/3/15 at 11:20pm

I hop the ratings are good for this!!!

[RippedMan]

Posted: 12/3/15 at 11:21pm

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

[bryan]

Posted: 12/3/15 at 11:22pm

I  loved it  if you love it say you love it if you did not like it say no but I loved the whole show

 

[behindthescenes2]

Posted: 12/3/15 at 11:22pm

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.

 

[Ranger Tom]

Posted: 12/3/15 at 11:27pm

CurtainsUpat8 said: "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?

It's called talent.  Also, what does it matter?  Color-blind casting, color-blind tele-writing?

"

 

[RippedMan]

Posted: 12/3/15 at 11:27pm

Any where to watch online? 

[fbueller]

Posted: 12/3/15 at 11:34pm

RippedMan said: "Any where to watch online? 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJwS1AwDR2s

 

[Scarywarhol]

Posted: 12/3/15 at 11:34pm

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

[Ranger Tom]

Posted: 12/3/15 at 11:35pm

Wanted to like it - just like I wanted to like Sound of Music and Peter Pan.  If they are going to do theater live, they need to do it in a theater with a live audience.  There was absolutely no energy in the opening scene.  The opening Oz scene was a little better but basically at the level of a decent college production.  As some have already posted, Dorothy had major pitch problems, and continued to have no energy.  The worse thing - the constant commercial breaks.  Even when they did start to move in a positive direction, it was destroyed by a commercial.  Did like some of stagecraft though.  

[MrSweetNAwful]

Posted: 12/3/15 at 11:35pm

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

[musicaltheatreman2]

Posted: 12/3/15 at 11:36pm

Everyone gave amazing vocal performance, but Amber, Stephanie, and Uzo's vocals were the standouts for me!!!  

[Marianne2]

Posted: 12/3/15 at 11:41pm

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.

[jimmycurry01]

Posted: 12/3/15 at 11:44pm

I was disappointed by both the tornado scene and the poppies scene.

[musicaltheatreman2]

Posted: 12/3/15 at 11:46pm

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. 

[gypsy101]

Posted: 12/3/15 at 11:48pm

Scarywarhol said: "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."

 

I so agree. When Queen Latifah quoted the Spice Girls I guffawed. If this goes to Broadway as planned, let them abandon this attempt at a new script.

Updated On: 12/3/15 at 11:48 PM

[LizzieCurry]

Posted: 12/3/15 at 11:49pm

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.

[Call_me_jorge]

Posted: 12/3/15 at 11:50pm

Where were the mics? 

[Jane2]

Posted: 12/3/15 at 11:50pm

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