REVIEW: ‘Wizard’ stuck in Kansas; lacks magic and imagination
The Utah Festival Opera’s third offering this summer is the stage adaptation of the movie “The Wizard of Oz,” and if this is how all stage productions of the magical show are it should never have been adapted for the stage.
UFO’s production was overly flat and lifeless. It had its moments of magic, but the pure joy the story should evince was missing from this plain and ordinary staging. Maybe its lack of appeal for me was the simple effects that couldn’t mirror the film’s. Or maybe it was the actors who walked their way through their lines without any conviction. Or maybe it was that you couldn’t hear anyone talk or sing over the orchestra (who was great by the way).
I think the inherent problem lay in UFO’s casting choice for Dorothy Gale from Kansas. Leslie Ann Hendricks seems to be a UFO darling (Nellie Forbush in “South Pacific” and Maria in “Sound of Music”) but her Dorothy was Maria in gingham and pigtails instead of robes and a wimple. Her rendition of “Over the Rainbow” showed no longing for that magical world existing just beyond her reach and instead was reduced to a pretty song sung to break up the monotony of delivering lines.
The majority of the other supporting roles were cute and at times fun in their delivery, but there were only two who really seemed to grasp the purpose of the show. Charles Edwin Taylor played a Cowardly Lion worthy of compare to Bert Lahr’s performance in the film and Vanessa J. Schukis’s Wicked Witch of the West (although more slapstick than horror) was a real treat. And it was obvious by the audience’s reaction whenever the two were on stage that they were the two favorites.
The costumes were amazing extravagant especially when it came to some of the supporting roles. The trees were able to pick and throw their apples, and the pseudo Japanese silks of the poppy field (all played by people) must have cost a fortune.
Unfortunately the sets could in no way compare to the outrageous costumes. Part of the magic of the movie is the change from black and white, dull Kansas to the colorful, over-the-top world of Oz. In UFO’s stage adaptation the sets were so simple their absence was very noticeable. This wasn’t a problem in Kansas where the simple sets evoked the feeling of drabness, but when we get to Oz we expect to see the difference. We expect sets and backdrops that evoke the magic that land embodies. The sets for “Nabucco” and “Madama Butterfly” are beautifully exquisite, so why couldn’t “Oz” be the same?
Still the show was fun. The children in the audience were having a wonderful time, and the lines and songs themselves are enough to cause all in attendance to break into fits of nostalgia. It just isn’t enough to coast on the coattails of the film. “The Wizard of Oz” never finds its own magic. It doesn’t awe or inspire; it simply exists. Maybe we should send the artistic team down the yellow brick road to ask the wizard for help. It couldn’t hurt.
Grade: C+