THE WIZARD OF OZ. To 13 April.
Leeds
THE WIZARD OF OZ
by L. Frank Baum, music and lyrics by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg.
Quarry Theatre, West Yorkshire Playhouse To 13 April 2002
7.30 Mats Thur & Sat 2pm
Runs 2hr 30min One interval
TICKETS 0113 213 7700
Review Timothy Ramsden 21 March
Dorothy and friends battle it out with a storm of technology.Late thirties Hollywood threw all it had at Baum's then popular children's books about Oz, so there's no reason digital age theatre shouldn't try its tricks on the story told in MGM's 1939 film. Following from her multi-media Singin' in the Rain West Yorkshire Playhouse director Kelly surrounds the action with projections and video-imagery that recreate the story's flights of fantasy (flights and fantasy) in startling ways.
Sometimes there's an interplay of projection and live actor; at the start Dorothy's seen on screen pedalling furiously home with her beloved dog Toto before Charlie Hayes emerges breathless back at the ranch, pursued – again on screen then stage – by Susie Baxter's local crone and wealth-bucket Miss Gultch.
Elsewhere there's free-wheeling video; in a telling moment when Dorothy's in bed in Kansas Miss Gultch apparently cycles over her head, morphing as she does so into the broomstick-bestriding Wicked Witch of the West.
At other times the trickery is more staid – we're already used to the actor surrounded by puppet-figures, allowing one live performer to stand in for a little crowd; it's from a different, separately established theatrical vocabulary. And the huge Wicked Witch screen close-up only exposes Susie Baxter's evidently fake nasal prosthetic.
At times the strong virtual imagery serves the action well, as when the yellow brick road appears in sections, snaking all over the stage. But elsewhere floral abundance seems over-assertive, and there's an awkward interplay among the Wicked Witch's micey minions. Cartoon-like on screen, on stage her creatures are good old actors wafting fabric stretched over wooden splints. Film audience will accept the screen images, and you can persuade theatregoers to accept the workshop props as real. Clashing the two together makes for an awesome weight of disbelief to be suspended.
In the end, instead of helping each other, the separate media are too often left battling it out. The cast is dwarfed on wide-open spaces needed for projection-room. Human singing strangely takes on an inhuman thinness when our ears are attuned to amplified, image-related sounds. An interesting, sometimes spectacular experiment, it demonstrates there's no reason to take the 'live' out of live theatre.
Uncle Henry/Guard/Ozian: Gary Bates
Miss Gultch/Wicked Witch: Susie Baxter
Tin Man: Ken Bradshaw
Professor Marvel/Wizard of Oz: Alan Cowan
Dorothy Gale: Charlie Hayes
Aunt Em/Glinda: Lisa Howard
Scarecrow: Simon Quarterman
Virtual Wizard of Oz: Patrick Stewart
Lion: Tony Timberlake
Heavenly Voices: Julia Hinchcliffe, Cheryl McAvoy, Samantha Murray
Director/Design Concept: Jude Kelly
Designer: Jessica Curtis
Lighting: Chris Davey
Costumes: Stephen Snell
Puppet Designer/Animation Director: John Barber
Video Designer: Mic Pool
Background music: Herbert Stothart
Dance and Vocal arrangements: Peter Howard
Music adaptation:John Kane
Musical Design/Arrangement: Jonathan Cooper
Musical Director/Arranger: Neil McArthur
Choreographer: Beverley Edmunds
2002-03-24 13:04:43