A big plus punching-up revivals of The Wiz is that not just anybody gets to play Dorothy. Usually, a healthy search precedes the casting, newcomers and relative newcomers the subjects of such serious foraging. This time around Dorothy is Broadway debutante Nichelle Lewis — and she’s got more than enough of what it takes.
A voice to stop clocks in only her first notable asset. She flaunts personality and acting acumen to back that up. She’s ready for all the choreography JaQuel Knight throws her way, and there’s plenty. From start to finish — even when Dorothy’s longing to get back home — Lewis gives the impression she’s having the time of her life.
A good part of the reason is that she’s the central figure in a much loved enterprise. No need to go into detail about a 1975 property that Charlie Smalls (music, lyrics) and William F. Brown (book) made when adapting L. Frank Baum’s “The Wonderful World of Oz” into an All-Black presentation.
[Read Bob Verini’s ★★☆☆☆ review here.]
The 1939 M-G-M Judy Garland starrer is tv-aired enough for everyone to know the story of a young girl, kidnapped by a tornado, who arrives in enchanted Oz to be joined by brainless Scarecrow (Avery Wilson), heart-missing Tinman (Phillip Johnson Richardson), and courage-lacking Lion (Kyle Ramar Freeman) on a journey to Emerald City, where a Wizard (Wayne Brady) will supposedly grant their various wishes.
Along the way — on Hannah Beachler’s zingy sets, in the imaginative costumes Sharen Davis supplies the entire ensemble, under Ryan J. O’Gara’s brilliant lights, and backed by Daniel Brodie’s enhancing videos and projections — the fearsome foursome treads the Yellow Brick Road, infusing unflagging vitality into the beloved Baum tale, much of this wrought by director Schele Williams.
Perhaps the strongest element The Wiz boasts is Small’s score. Forty-nine years ago, “Ease on Down the Road” and “Home” eased on out of the show to knock at the American Songbook’s increasingly difficult to attain standards roster. The other Smalls inclusions retain listenability hardly common in todays’ tuner crop.
To assure that the earworm-y ditties get their due (and more), everyone asked to solo has a voice equal to Lewis’ power. Not a one of them — including Deborah “Nobody’s Supposed to Be Here” Cox as Glinda — is denied the chance to hit notes high enough to rattle the rafters. Also, not a one resists indulging the kind of sanctified American-Idol melismas that have audience members hooting mid-song.
The dancing in these lively circumstances is also a non-stop achievement, beginning with the tornado. To suggest its ravages, choreographer Knight has his primed troupers dervishing in filmy grey outfits. It may be that a tornado has never been more symbolically presented on a stage. (That’s even if anyone has previously had to meet a tornado challenge.) As routines accumulate, neither Knight nor his dancers show any signs of tiring.
With all the show-stopping singing and dancing and voluptuous acting — from most prominently Lewis, Freeman, Richardson, and Wilson — it could be said that The Wiz gives the enthusiastic audience its money’s worth.
True and not so true. What about giving the audience more than its money’s worth? What about giving the ticket buyers a better tale than this backwards glance is currently providing? Or is this version of The Wiz not so much a backward glance as a flash forward? As a matter of disappointing fact, what’s on view now is not entirely Williams’ book.
In the program, Amber Ruffin, who neatly revised last season’s Some Like It Hot with Matthew Lopez, is announced as having added material. How much? According to supplied info, she’s boldly, not to say brazenly, reworked 50 percent of it. In one interview, she has vouched of her contributions, “We made a choice to not modernize it, but to make it so it could always go up at any time—I honestly feel like this version could go up 30 years from now and you don’t have to change a word, and it is fine.”
Not so fast. What’s on view right now isn’t even “fine” for 2024. That includes just about the entire second act, which gets going at Emerald City with a green-tinged production number. In Ruffin’s revise the Wizard is seen even before the Wicked Witch does any menacing — a Wicked Witch called Evillene and played by Melody A. Betts, who’s also an adoring Aunt Em.
When this supposedly contemporized Wizard begins wizzing, he’s no longer exposed as a benevolent aging fellow but is depicted as a tough galoot supposedly protecting his Emerald City citizens from some curse or other that needs lifting. Evillene, when she finally makes an appearance, is menacing but hardly as throttling as spectators expect. More specifics will not be itemized because they’d only confirm that this new shuffle – intended to address racism in a politicized gaze at the classic? — packs nowhere near the delightfully timeless horror that audiences have long known and still love.
Two concluding observations: 1) Lewis goes through both Wiz acts flaunting long, polished fingernails. Some may find it strange that a young girl living in a rural Kansas cabin appears to have an expert manicurist at her disposal; and 2) There is no Toto.
The Wiz opened April 17, 2024, at the Marquis Theatre. Tickets and information: wizmusical.com
