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Let me begin with a confession: I’ve by no means appreciated “The Wizard of Oz.” However give me a retelling with, say, a Black Dorothy and Black Oz, and I’m instantly clicking my heels.
When “The Wiz” debuted on Broadway in 1975, it was a colourful exclamation of Blackness on the stage. That’s to say a Black rating, by Charlie Smalls, together with gospel and R&B; a Black forged; and Black audiences on the forefront.
Then three years later the beloved Motown movie adaptation, starring Diana Ross, Michael Jackson and Richard Pryor, pulled a Black Dorothy from her house, not in Kansas however in Harlem, and the New York Metropolis boroughs have been cleverly transmogrified into the fashionable, futuristic Oz.
Now “The Wiz” returns to Broadway in a revival directed by Schele Williams and an up to date ebook by Amber Ruffin, with the goal of making a take “by way of the Blackest of Black lenses.” This new manufacturing, which opened on the Marquis Theater on Tuesday, showcases inventive visuals and a few standout performances, however stops in need of bringing trendy Blackness to Broadway.
Right here, Dorothy (Nichelle Lewis, in her Broadway debut) is a metropolis woman who’s moved to Kansas to reside along with her Aunt Em (Melody A. Betts, who later doubles because the deliciously brass-throated witch Evillene). However Dorothy doesn’t really feel at house and is being bullied by her classmates. A sudden meteorological anomaly flies Dorothy to Oz, the place she seeks the counsel of the nice and highly effective Wiz (Wayne Brady) on easy methods to get again house. Alongside the best way she’s joined by a scarecrow (Avery Wilson) in want of a mind, a tinman (Phillip Johnson Richardson) wanting a coronary heart and a lion (Kyle Ramar Freeman) determined for some braveness. (Sorry dog-lovers, there’s no Toto.)
There’s loads of gold to be discovered alongside this yellow brick street. Deborah Cox’s Glinda, the nice witch, in a shimmering gold robe, seems to be like a jewel and seems like one, too, along with her crystalline voice switching from jazzy scatting to a glowing falsetto in “He’s the Wiz” and later providing a triumphant efficiency of “Consider in Your self.”
Glinda’s not the one one with flashy style; the costume design, by Sharen Davis, attracts from a wild, unpredictable vary of time intervals and developments. Ozians with blue Afro puffs, inexperienced extensions and multicolored braids flounce round in shiny petticoats throughout a scene meant to copy a New Orleans second-line parade; Evillene’s military of evil poppies slinks round in ’70s-style Afros and flare-legged jumpsuits, and the denizens of Emerald Metropolis saunter in Afro-futuristic outfits with ornate collars and fringe.
There’s simply as a lot colour within the choreography, by JaQuel Knight, which gives an evocative mélange of types. Dorothy’s twister is summoned with a flurry of pirouetting dancers in billowing grey materials. Later these stiff-backed, sleek turns are simply as rapidly swapped for hunched, down-low Afro-Cuban steps and crisp hip-hop strikes.
One of the best performances within the manufacturing are likewise grounded in motion: Wilson is a playful scarecrow, his wobbly knees and freely flinging limbs displaying off spectacular flexibility and acrobatic talent. Freeman’s dramatic prancing and marching because the lion pair completely together with his character’s … effectively, leonine theatricality.
Add to the combination a popping-and-locking Tinman who additionally drops a soulful “What Would I Do If I May Really feel” and the charming showmanship of Brady’s Wiz (armed with a energetic exit quantity much more pleasant than his entrance), and also you’ve received a forged of sidekicks who outshine the hero.
As Dorothy, Lewis dutifully hits the notes however is dwarfed by the stage and the performers round her. Although Ruffin’s ebook gives a number of trendy updates to the lingo and offers her companions new again tales, Dorothy nonetheless lacks dimension, and Lewis struggles to fill her in with any emotional shading.
Regardless of its freewheeling fashions there’s a hemmed-in high quality to a lot of the manufacturing. This Dorothy and her journey, like the general route, is shiny and tidy however falls quick in character. The animated backdrops of Ozoften have a cutesy, over-glossed Pixar-movie really feel. The pacing doesn’t fairly “ease on down” because it does race by way of the present’s two-and-a-half-hour working time; the settings and characters go by in a blur. Even the musical arc of the present slumps right into a routine, with a predictable construct towards every huge solo climax.
All of which is to say that “The Wiz” is a pleasing, serviceable time on the theater, however as a brand new manufacturing of a musical with a legacy of bringing Blackness to considered one of Hollywood’s and Broadway’s favourite fairy tales, it’s much less satisfying.
There’s a more energizing manufacturing hinted at within the ecstatic array of costumes and mixture of choreography. There’s a stronger, extra daring illustration of modern-day Blackness urged within the faint touches of New Orleans’s Tremé neighborhood and a personality’s quip about discovering their hair’s curl sample.
Previously this paper’s critics weren’t impressed by productions of this musical. In 1984 Frank Wealthy rashly dismissed the “cheesy” Broadway manufacturing of a musical that he deemed “hardly nice” however “a once-fervent expression of Black self-respect and expertise.” In his evaluation of the unique, in 1975, Clive Barnes wrote of a manufacturing with “vitality” and “type” that was however “tiresome” — maybe as a result of, he ventures, for him such fairy tales are solely interesting after they’re grounded in a single’s personal expertise. Does the present “say various things to Blacks than to whites?” requested a Black author in The Occasions a number of months later. His reply was sure. So is mine.
Practically 50 years later, with the same diploma of ambivalence, I’m wondering if a revival of considered one of theater’s beloved Black musicals is really a Black expertise. It feels extra like simply one other night time on the theater.
The Wiz
By Aug. 18 on the Marquis Theater, Manhattan; wizmusical.com. Operating time: 2 hours half-hour.
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