The weekly series of online streams of Musicals continued this weekend with Universal Studios' 2015 "live" version of the Charlie Smalls take on The Wizard Of Oz, "The Wiz". Previously, these musicals have been being aired in the hope that those watching would donate money back to The Arts in order to help theatres, production companies and individual artistes through this most difficult of times; however, they made a decision last week to not show any musical at all in solidarity with the #BlackLivesMatter campaign and, continuing that trend, this week showed a production which was intended originally to be for an all-black cast, and it was presented that way here too. Nothing wrong with that. However, here we were now being asked to donate to an American charity NAACP. A charity I had never heard of, and so had to use Mr. Google. It stands for "The National Association For The Advancement Of Colored People".
I have had a long and happy association with this show, having played the part of the Scarecrow in it, and directed both professional and Youth Theatre versions of the show too. I first came across it about 30 years' ago, and it still is a firm favourite with me, preferring it in almost every aspect to any other adaptation of the Baum classic I have thus far seen.
You must forgive me for saying then but this live version was nothing more than tepid.
First the set. I simply didn't understand the set. It was not on a conventional stage, nor was it a film studio, but a very strange half-way house with some dodgy computer graphics. Thus there was little or no atmosphere built up, since cinematically it didn't work. The same went for the characterisations and direction. One had the feeling that some of the time it was directed as if it were a stage production, and other times acknowledging it as a piece of cinema, but somehow, a comfortable balance between the two was never struck. The intitial storm and using theatrical flies to send Dorothy into the air was pure stage, but felt very flat and lost impact on film, for example.
The other thing which irritated about this production was the choice of songs. It was neither the stage Musical nor the famous Michael Jackson and Diana Ross film. The credits state that this live version was "based on the Musical, with a book by William Brown but additional material by Tina Tippit." Some of the additional material, such as more up-to-date references, worked and were humorous. But there were also a few bizarre omissions too.
It is a very hard balance to strike undoubtedly; to create a live buzz on camera. But here there did seem little or no connectivity, dynamicism, or energy between the cast. That's not to say that they were not consummate performers. Far from it. In fact, individually, they were all very good, with some excellent voices in there to boot. The characterisations were good and secure, and yet.. something was missing...
Queen Latifa played The Wiz - a role reserved ordinarily for an actor. However, a virtue was made of this incorporating the contemporary thinking of gender-blind casting and allowing more women to play men's roles. Other principals were Mary J. Blige as Eveline, Uzo Aduba as Glinda, Stephanie Mills as Aunt Em, Amber Riley as Adaperle, and Common as The Doorkeeper.
The five main roles were all excellent. Elijah Kelley's interpretation of The Scarecrow was not one I had seen before but it certainly worked for him well. Ne-Yo made a great Tinman (and his make-up was one of the best I've ever seen). David Alan Grier was the cowardly lion, and gave a brilliant portrayal of this role. Whilst the protagonist herself, Dorothy, was played by newcomer Shanice Williams, who had a lovely voice and a pleasing manner.
With the choreography by Fatima Robinson, with the enlisted help of a few Cirque Du Soleil performers to do some aerial work, stilt-acrobatics etc, the musical numbers were upbeat and interesting.
It's such a shame that putting all of this together it didn't cohere convincingly, and didn't have that up-beat uplifting feel to the show which was able to be captured in the famous 1978 film, and on stage, so am uncertain as to why it didn't have that here too. Pity.
Reviewer - Alastair Zyggu
on - 12/6/20
No comments:
Post a Comment