why can't I?
The Aunt and I just returned from seeing The Wizard Of Oz as staged by the Sydney Theatre Company.
It was actually the Aunt's idea cos me, I mistakenly thought it was part of next year's season. Don't know how that happened but thank goodness the Aunt mentioned it to me when I was down a few weeks ago. She said it was playing for only a week and that the role of the Wicked Witch Of The West would be played by a guy in drag. I said "How much are the tickets?" Thirty bucks. "Hokay, I'm there. Book it now. Now! It'll sell out like that. Call 'em or get 'em online right now."
It's definitely clever timing with Wicked having played for two months already in Sydney and several months in Melbourne. And I'm still not convinced I'd actually enjoy Wicked cos the book alienated me so completely. Plus when the Aunt says she wants to see something, I agree just on principle cos it's not that often our tastes actually coincide. I knew this would be a nostalgic thing for both of us.
And then just as the curtain rose, I had this sudden qualm of "Holy shit, I hope it's not going to try to look exactly like the movie and fail miserably and god I hope they don't try to do American accents."
It was bloody marvellous. For the second time in as many days, I found myself watching an iconic childhood experience reinvented from the ground up. Literally. The only thing that remained the same were the words and even the famous cliched lines were tweaked just a little which was both startling and wonderful. It still said Kansas but all the accents were either Australian or perfectly neutral or switched a little.
Auntie Em was a trailer trash version of Kath (or Kim) who became this fabulously Fifties socialite Glinda complete with aerosol hair spray instead of wand. The uncle was vanished and the three farmhands were instead the 'uncles'. Toto was played by this very tall guy in a puppy dog costune who was just hysterically funny. The Munchkins were totally trippy and very Burtonesque with costumes I can't even begin to describe but hilariously accompanied with oversized cameras like paparazzi. The magician was this clever sinister sort of East European biker thug guy. The Scarecrow was a dandy model/musician. The Tin man was all sort of Viking. The Lion was a Hispanic sort of Elvis impersonator. And best of all, Dorothy was played by an Aboriginal actress, Ursula Yovich. *roar of triumph*
But oh man, the Wicked Witch Of The West. Played by Geoff Revell whose surname instantly made me wonder if he's related to Graeme Revell, musician and score composer, the guy who did the most poignant score to The Crow. I mean, me being me and the way my attention skews at this point in my life, I would have focused on that role anyway. But wow, the way they redrew the character was endlessly fascinating, always yielding up something intriguing and unexpected.
For starters, there was no green skin and no black at all. She was in ghostly slightly flimsy white, all white, with a long wig of pure white hair. All that was green were her lime green stockings and beautifully Twenties shoes. And what they did was shine a green light on her every now and then, splitting the black darkness in this powerful stream of eerie sickly green.
But what I loved was the detail of her costumes. When she first arrives as the Witch, she's wearing this long Victorian dress with a massive ragged train that she had to keep holding up and out of the way, the skirt and train all white slightly cheap lace. Very Miss Havisham, I just realised. But the top of the dress was almost like a suit. A tuxedo in fact, all white. Not flamboyant, just subtle enough that a keen-eyed obsessive like me would notice. Tall pointed hat, naturally, and light brown broom.
And then at certain points during the play, it would be a full white tuxedo. Again, not slick, a bit dowdy and baggy and slightly clownish. Isn't that absolutely fascinating genderplay? Both a nod to the drag role as well as the power implications of the Wicked Witch? Male trappings and all that? Fascinating!
And the characterisation was tweaked too. There was no water thing. It was touch. Early on she screams "Don't touch me, DON'T touch me!" And how does Dorothy vanquish her? She hugs her and holds on. And that melts the Witch into white smoke. Absolutely fucking mesmerising and brilliant.
My god, the psychosexual content was just remarkable. Totally reinvented the whole story for me. Because, yeah, through the usual cultural osmosis, I was vaguely aware that there's a whole psychological subtext to The Wizard Of Oz --- even in book form? --- and maybe one day I'd get around to investigating that. This brought it right in front of me and unpacked it, possibly changed it around, in utterly thrilling visual and aural fashion.
And cos I haven't actually read up on all that analytical discourse, I was sitting there, racking my brain as to exactly what the threat of the Witch is to Dorothy. Is it just old age and the horror of adulthood, of knowledge as power and therefore corruptive? Is there a sexual component I'm not quite getting or is that just part of the knowledge thing? Because yes, there always seems to be a lasciviousness to the way the Witch is played. But here all that white imagery made her more crone rather than whore and I was trying to remember if there was any whoreishness about the film Witch in her black and green. She did have that vivid red lipstick, didn't she? Did she? No, I'm thinking of the Wicked poster now. Sorry. Just green lips for the awesomely angular Margaret Hamilton. Or was all the sexual imagery invested in that damned phallic broom?
But yeah, there was this whole beauty versus ugliness theme going through the play and they did this great dangerous thing when they had the Witch land in the Emerald City and go eagerly through the makeover machine. Only she breaks it, poor thing!
Most incredible sequence though? The reprise of Over The Rainbow at the lowest point of the film when Dorothy's trapped alone in the castle. She sings it sitting in the darkness at the foot of the stage to the right. And the Witch floating at the back in centre stage, all pale green and white in the pitch black, sings this sometimes vulnerable sometimes sinister harmony. Oh man, it was riveting. It was very Jungian, that resolution, and of course I loved it like the Ursula Le Guin devotee I am. *snort* Turn and face your shadow, turn and embrace it to neutralise it.
Listening to Judy sing Over The Rainbow now, I realise just how this play stripped all the sentimentality away. And Ursula Yovich was so strong and so effective that when she cries as Dorothy, god your heart totally breaks for her. They really didn't hold back on the childlike pain which was exactly the right thing to do. It rang so true, was so distressing but valuable to witness. And by the same token, the darkness was very strong, pushing always just under the bright colours and energetic dancing and joyful escapism.
And christ, what a voice. Because she comes on and less than ten minutes later, she has to sing that monster classic of a song. The moment the musical cue sounded, I tensed. Because really I don't like that song very much. I used to love it as a teenager, fascinated by the words and the wistfulness of it, fascinated by it from a writer point of view. But the syrupiness of it just puts me off completely. And conversely, I fucking hate it when people try to modernise it. They never do it right, it always sounds so fucking wrong and tryhard that the proper version plays even louder in my head.
This was completely different and I kept waiting to feel that internal resistance, that flinch and revulsion. But every time I thought it would happen on some crucial note or turn of melody, somehow she sang the most beautiful note or the most interesting turn of melody. And all the while I was cataloguing all the ways it was different, constantly surprised at how much I was liking it. By the time she finished, I knew we were in very good hands indeed. She made it so her own, Ursula did, and what a wonderfully powerful emotional voice she has.
Mind you, I kinda should have known the music would be fantastic. Cos not only did they have an awesomely modern band in the orchestra pit but the first sound of the entire play is a lion's roar and this great new clash of notes. But cos I didn't recognise the musician leading the band or any of the names in the program, I was startled and trepidatious.
Every musical number was unique, quite like the Oompa Loompa songs in Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, and I kinda regretted that the many kids in the audience got very restive during the beautiful song from the Tin Man played by Patrick Graham. But clearly the adults were paying very close attention cos he got quite enthusiastic applause. Yes, I loved that we got to clap after every song. That's such a cool thing about kids' productions.
The staging of the Scarecrow's number was so awesome I had my mouth open the whole time, wide eyed and unblinking, so delighted at what I was seeing. Cos they had it like a pop music video. And of course it didn't hurt that Luke Clayson was extremely pale, had a very black pageboy wig on, and was in this totally Regency outfit of highcut jacket with obscenely tight trousers that damned near showed us what he had for breakfast. He was all tall and skinny and longlimbed, exactly the kind of look that renders me stupid with lust. It was just a pity that his voice was quite frequently drowned out by the music so I could barely make out the words. I caught enough to know they were very close if not exactly the lyrics from the film.
Which held true for pretty much all the songs. And they did this absolutely marvellous thing by moving the Lion's If I Were King number from where it made no sense at all in the Emerald City to when they're in the Haunted Forest, trying to work up the nerve to go rescue Dorothy. I've always loved that song --- truly, is there anyone who doesn't love that song to bits? Assuming you actually like musicals and The Wizard Of Oz? --- and holy fuck, the guy who played the Lion totally NAILED it! Absolutely brilliant voice, that boy. Ezra Juanta. Amazing texture and range and such fabulous physical flair. Very Leonine, indeed. :p
What I didn't like so much was the song right at the end as a curtain call. Well, it was a bit disconcerting when it began and we didn't recognise it straight off and then it went into this rather meandering slightly tedious version of Over The Rainbow that went from one side of the stage to the other. When the percussion kicked and the energy level rose, I'm sure I wasn't the only one to be enormously relieved and then it was the perfect way to end the show, a high energy happy dancing version of We're Off To See The Wizard Of Oz which yes, little girls were singing even when we were in the toilets afterwards. Hee.
The most awesome thing about the production? The actual set, how they did the same black and white to vivid colour aesthetic like in the film. And how clever all the devices were, projecting the changing landscape of Oz onto these flat hill screens, using a white screen and a camera for the Wizard, projecting each of our travellers in flickery black and white onto the hill screens during the first meeting with him and only he in colour with this awesome mask that totally evoked --- wot's that film called? one of the earliest films ever made, the one that Smashing Pumpkins kinda redid for the music video of Tonight, Tonight --- A Trip To The Moon with the little moving bits and the handcoloured funhouse look. Good god, it was made in 1902! *boggles* I always thought Twenties, I have no idea why.
But yes, there was such a great sense of retro amateur creativity about the whole production, from the cardboard cutouts that moved around and totally winked at within the dialogue itself --- "We're lost, how do we know where we are?" "Well, there's a signpost moving behind us" *lol* --- to the so charming shadow puppet show during the Tin Man's song to show his tragic love history. And our seats were so I could just catch a glimpse of the actor playing Toto, Hamish Fletcher, actually manipulating the stick puppets. Loved that! They were so delicate and beautiful, like a Victorian version of Javanese shadow puppetry. And they had an actual television set for the bit in the castle when the Witch pretends to be Auntie Em which was excellent, all snowy and crackly.
The only thing I didn't like was the way they did the tornado. Partly. The light and circling strobe pattern was awesome but I didn't like when it just stayed on Dorothy frozen. And I absolutely hated the big twirling shape held at the top of the stage by Hamish Fletcher. That wasn't nearly as powerful as I wanted, made even worse by the stupid voiceover as the cardboard cut-out of the caravan went up into the catwalk. *sigh* It was much more terrifying when the circling strobe pattern went wild and twinned across the stage and the lightning flashed.
I absolutely adored how dramatic the lights were in this whole production, the way they lanced out into the audience like concert lighting, the way they were lovely deep jewel tones up into the darkness at the lowest point of the play. It was so big, the aesthetic, which was just thrilling and so refreshing after all the oh so arty plays I've seen on that very stage.
But otherwise, gosh yes, loved the sheer inventiveness of the set. That the caravan was much smaller when it came down in Oz and opened out in this crazily cracked way. That Emerald City was like a big techno club, complete with thumping music and the words all snazzy and elegant on this elegant jewel coloured fractal screen, and the guard was like a bouncer. Guard and bouncer and Wizard all being the same guy, hee. I didn't particularly like the vocal twitchiness of his performances, Alirio Zavarce, but when he also played viola in the band down below, that was just fabulous. And the way he kept twitching his big moustache as the bouncer was TOO funny! He was a little tedious as the DJ, just like he was as the magician back in Kansas. *shrug*
God, it's such a bitter disappointment when the Wizard is unmasked. I still feel it, the dreariness of illusions decayed and people turning out to be weak charlatans. I never liked that bit. And here, the play didn't quite recover for that. Not for me, at least. In the film, it's a fabulous hat-trick to discover at the end that Dorothy dreamed it all. They didn't do that here. It ended just on Auntie Em and Dorothy running into each other's arms. Which was lovely as an emotional resolution but intellectually I still felt cheated by the Wizard's deception.
And you know, for the first time ever, I had this thought of "Wait a second, why the fuck couldn't you have told Dorothy right at the start that she could have gone home just by clicking her heels?" Glinda's line of "She wouldn't have believed me" is too weak for me. It took me a few seconds more of thought to realise that Dorothy had to want to go home. Cos, yeah, when she lands in Oz, she's so dazzled by adventure and new sights. And here they very much played up the attention thing, that Dorothy soaks up all the attention and even becomes a little egotistic at times. I'm pretty sure that's not in the film but I could be wrong. So yeah, I guess she has to go through a lot before she really and truly wants to go home. She has to miss Auntie Em. And yeah, now I remember Judy saying that. *nods*
I did like how Dorothy was so childlike in this production, dressed in this sack of dowdy material that becomes painfully colourful in Oz. It's a shapeless smock thing as opposed to the cliched twee fitted pinafore of the film. And her hair's just tied back, no horrible pigtails. It was exactly the right kind of childlike portrayal and Ursula totally worked it with the way she stood, her feet turned in and her shoulders hunched. Gawky shy twelve year old. Poifect.
And still there were these utterly naughty bits like at the end when the Scarecrow and Toto hug hard and Toto actually grabs that very tempting arse of the Scarecrow. I laughed out loud but was so relieved cos yeah, it was just begging for it! Hee! Mind you, the flipside of that was right at the beginning when Dorothy encounters the magician and he was creepily pedophiliac towards her. See what I mean about the darkness? It was very very good.
Like yesterday, I really want the soundtrack. Those arrangements were so great and I would love to immerse myself in the vocal nuances, in the altered lyrics.
And yeah, I'm still puzzling over the symbolism of the ruby slippers. Because I'm a filthy mind, naturally my first thought was "is it a sexual thing? No, that was Red Riding Hood's hood being a clitoris thing. Huh. Maybe not." But now I realise more than one article of apparel can represent female genitalia and power, can't it? Sparkly red shoes as a symbol of female power. Hell fucking yes. Awesomeness. Best decision those filmmakers ever did, to make them red to take advantage of Technicolour. *beams* And both the Aunt and I totally missed the moment when they go from the dead witch's feet to Dorothy's feet, me more so cos I was watching one of the Munchkins who had lost a bit from his camera and I wanted to see whether he'd try to fix it onstage. He didn't.
Both the Aunt and I were wondering what the kids made of the play. Firstly, because the visuals were so set apart from the film. And secondly, because the depictions seemed so very adult. But of course we're looking at it as adults. I bet the kids only saw what they wanted and ignored what they didn't immediately understand. It was a great production that way, playing on so many levels of understanding.
The applause was a bit tepid which was a shame cos it's the final day of performance. And the very last performance must have or is just about to start.
Oh man, I'm so glad we went. Now I'm almost tempted to buy the film and read the book and investigate all those analyses. And yes, it was a constant source of squee that I was watching The Wizard Of Oz in the actual Emerald City of my darling Sydney. Hee!
*sighs happily and toddles off*
It was actually the Aunt's idea cos me, I mistakenly thought it was part of next year's season. Don't know how that happened but thank goodness the Aunt mentioned it to me when I was down a few weeks ago. She said it was playing for only a week and that the role of the Wicked Witch Of The West would be played by a guy in drag. I said "How much are the tickets?" Thirty bucks. "Hokay, I'm there. Book it now. Now! It'll sell out like that. Call 'em or get 'em online right now."
It's definitely clever timing with Wicked having played for two months already in Sydney and several months in Melbourne. And I'm still not convinced I'd actually enjoy Wicked cos the book alienated me so completely. Plus when the Aunt says she wants to see something, I agree just on principle cos it's not that often our tastes actually coincide. I knew this would be a nostalgic thing for both of us.
And then just as the curtain rose, I had this sudden qualm of "Holy shit, I hope it's not going to try to look exactly like the movie and fail miserably and god I hope they don't try to do American accents."
It was bloody marvellous. For the second time in as many days, I found myself watching an iconic childhood experience reinvented from the ground up. Literally. The only thing that remained the same were the words and even the famous cliched lines were tweaked just a little which was both startling and wonderful. It still said Kansas but all the accents were either Australian or perfectly neutral or switched a little.
Auntie Em was a trailer trash version of Kath (or Kim) who became this fabulously Fifties socialite Glinda complete with aerosol hair spray instead of wand. The uncle was vanished and the three farmhands were instead the 'uncles'. Toto was played by this very tall guy in a puppy dog costune who was just hysterically funny. The Munchkins were totally trippy and very Burtonesque with costumes I can't even begin to describe but hilariously accompanied with oversized cameras like paparazzi. The magician was this clever sinister sort of East European biker thug guy. The Scarecrow was a dandy model/musician. The Tin man was all sort of Viking. The Lion was a Hispanic sort of Elvis impersonator. And best of all, Dorothy was played by an Aboriginal actress, Ursula Yovich. *roar of triumph*
But oh man, the Wicked Witch Of The West. Played by Geoff Revell whose surname instantly made me wonder if he's related to Graeme Revell, musician and score composer, the guy who did the most poignant score to The Crow. I mean, me being me and the way my attention skews at this point in my life, I would have focused on that role anyway. But wow, the way they redrew the character was endlessly fascinating, always yielding up something intriguing and unexpected.
For starters, there was no green skin and no black at all. She was in ghostly slightly flimsy white, all white, with a long wig of pure white hair. All that was green were her lime green stockings and beautifully Twenties shoes. And what they did was shine a green light on her every now and then, splitting the black darkness in this powerful stream of eerie sickly green.
But what I loved was the detail of her costumes. When she first arrives as the Witch, she's wearing this long Victorian dress with a massive ragged train that she had to keep holding up and out of the way, the skirt and train all white slightly cheap lace. Very Miss Havisham, I just realised. But the top of the dress was almost like a suit. A tuxedo in fact, all white. Not flamboyant, just subtle enough that a keen-eyed obsessive like me would notice. Tall pointed hat, naturally, and light brown broom.
And then at certain points during the play, it would be a full white tuxedo. Again, not slick, a bit dowdy and baggy and slightly clownish. Isn't that absolutely fascinating genderplay? Both a nod to the drag role as well as the power implications of the Wicked Witch? Male trappings and all that? Fascinating!
And the characterisation was tweaked too. There was no water thing. It was touch. Early on she screams "Don't touch me, DON'T touch me!" And how does Dorothy vanquish her? She hugs her and holds on. And that melts the Witch into white smoke. Absolutely fucking mesmerising and brilliant.
My god, the psychosexual content was just remarkable. Totally reinvented the whole story for me. Because, yeah, through the usual cultural osmosis, I was vaguely aware that there's a whole psychological subtext to The Wizard Of Oz --- even in book form? --- and maybe one day I'd get around to investigating that. This brought it right in front of me and unpacked it, possibly changed it around, in utterly thrilling visual and aural fashion.
And cos I haven't actually read up on all that analytical discourse, I was sitting there, racking my brain as to exactly what the threat of the Witch is to Dorothy. Is it just old age and the horror of adulthood, of knowledge as power and therefore corruptive? Is there a sexual component I'm not quite getting or is that just part of the knowledge thing? Because yes, there always seems to be a lasciviousness to the way the Witch is played. But here all that white imagery made her more crone rather than whore and I was trying to remember if there was any whoreishness about the film Witch in her black and green. She did have that vivid red lipstick, didn't she? Did she? No, I'm thinking of the Wicked poster now. Sorry. Just green lips for the awesomely angular Margaret Hamilton. Or was all the sexual imagery invested in that damned phallic broom?
But yeah, there was this whole beauty versus ugliness theme going through the play and they did this great dangerous thing when they had the Witch land in the Emerald City and go eagerly through the makeover machine. Only she breaks it, poor thing!
Most incredible sequence though? The reprise of Over The Rainbow at the lowest point of the film when Dorothy's trapped alone in the castle. She sings it sitting in the darkness at the foot of the stage to the right. And the Witch floating at the back in centre stage, all pale green and white in the pitch black, sings this sometimes vulnerable sometimes sinister harmony. Oh man, it was riveting. It was very Jungian, that resolution, and of course I loved it like the Ursula Le Guin devotee I am. *snort* Turn and face your shadow, turn and embrace it to neutralise it.
Listening to Judy sing Over The Rainbow now, I realise just how this play stripped all the sentimentality away. And Ursula Yovich was so strong and so effective that when she cries as Dorothy, god your heart totally breaks for her. They really didn't hold back on the childlike pain which was exactly the right thing to do. It rang so true, was so distressing but valuable to witness. And by the same token, the darkness was very strong, pushing always just under the bright colours and energetic dancing and joyful escapism.
And christ, what a voice. Because she comes on and less than ten minutes later, she has to sing that monster classic of a song. The moment the musical cue sounded, I tensed. Because really I don't like that song very much. I used to love it as a teenager, fascinated by the words and the wistfulness of it, fascinated by it from a writer point of view. But the syrupiness of it just puts me off completely. And conversely, I fucking hate it when people try to modernise it. They never do it right, it always sounds so fucking wrong and tryhard that the proper version plays even louder in my head.
This was completely different and I kept waiting to feel that internal resistance, that flinch and revulsion. But every time I thought it would happen on some crucial note or turn of melody, somehow she sang the most beautiful note or the most interesting turn of melody. And all the while I was cataloguing all the ways it was different, constantly surprised at how much I was liking it. By the time she finished, I knew we were in very good hands indeed. She made it so her own, Ursula did, and what a wonderfully powerful emotional voice she has.
Mind you, I kinda should have known the music would be fantastic. Cos not only did they have an awesomely modern band in the orchestra pit but the first sound of the entire play is a lion's roar and this great new clash of notes. But cos I didn't recognise the musician leading the band or any of the names in the program, I was startled and trepidatious.
Every musical number was unique, quite like the Oompa Loompa songs in Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, and I kinda regretted that the many kids in the audience got very restive during the beautiful song from the Tin Man played by Patrick Graham. But clearly the adults were paying very close attention cos he got quite enthusiastic applause. Yes, I loved that we got to clap after every song. That's such a cool thing about kids' productions.
The staging of the Scarecrow's number was so awesome I had my mouth open the whole time, wide eyed and unblinking, so delighted at what I was seeing. Cos they had it like a pop music video. And of course it didn't hurt that Luke Clayson was extremely pale, had a very black pageboy wig on, and was in this totally Regency outfit of highcut jacket with obscenely tight trousers that damned near showed us what he had for breakfast. He was all tall and skinny and longlimbed, exactly the kind of look that renders me stupid with lust. It was just a pity that his voice was quite frequently drowned out by the music so I could barely make out the words. I caught enough to know they were very close if not exactly the lyrics from the film.
Which held true for pretty much all the songs. And they did this absolutely marvellous thing by moving the Lion's If I Were King number from where it made no sense at all in the Emerald City to when they're in the Haunted Forest, trying to work up the nerve to go rescue Dorothy. I've always loved that song --- truly, is there anyone who doesn't love that song to bits? Assuming you actually like musicals and The Wizard Of Oz? --- and holy fuck, the guy who played the Lion totally NAILED it! Absolutely brilliant voice, that boy. Ezra Juanta. Amazing texture and range and such fabulous physical flair. Very Leonine, indeed. :p
What I didn't like so much was the song right at the end as a curtain call. Well, it was a bit disconcerting when it began and we didn't recognise it straight off and then it went into this rather meandering slightly tedious version of Over The Rainbow that went from one side of the stage to the other. When the percussion kicked and the energy level rose, I'm sure I wasn't the only one to be enormously relieved and then it was the perfect way to end the show, a high energy happy dancing version of We're Off To See The Wizard Of Oz which yes, little girls were singing even when we were in the toilets afterwards. Hee.
The most awesome thing about the production? The actual set, how they did the same black and white to vivid colour aesthetic like in the film. And how clever all the devices were, projecting the changing landscape of Oz onto these flat hill screens, using a white screen and a camera for the Wizard, projecting each of our travellers in flickery black and white onto the hill screens during the first meeting with him and only he in colour with this awesome mask that totally evoked --- wot's that film called? one of the earliest films ever made, the one that Smashing Pumpkins kinda redid for the music video of Tonight, Tonight --- A Trip To The Moon with the little moving bits and the handcoloured funhouse look. Good god, it was made in 1902! *boggles* I always thought Twenties, I have no idea why.
But yes, there was such a great sense of retro amateur creativity about the whole production, from the cardboard cutouts that moved around and totally winked at within the dialogue itself --- "We're lost, how do we know where we are?" "Well, there's a signpost moving behind us" *lol* --- to the so charming shadow puppet show during the Tin Man's song to show his tragic love history. And our seats were so I could just catch a glimpse of the actor playing Toto, Hamish Fletcher, actually manipulating the stick puppets. Loved that! They were so delicate and beautiful, like a Victorian version of Javanese shadow puppetry. And they had an actual television set for the bit in the castle when the Witch pretends to be Auntie Em which was excellent, all snowy and crackly.
The only thing I didn't like was the way they did the tornado. Partly. The light and circling strobe pattern was awesome but I didn't like when it just stayed on Dorothy frozen. And I absolutely hated the big twirling shape held at the top of the stage by Hamish Fletcher. That wasn't nearly as powerful as I wanted, made even worse by the stupid voiceover as the cardboard cut-out of the caravan went up into the catwalk. *sigh* It was much more terrifying when the circling strobe pattern went wild and twinned across the stage and the lightning flashed.
I absolutely adored how dramatic the lights were in this whole production, the way they lanced out into the audience like concert lighting, the way they were lovely deep jewel tones up into the darkness at the lowest point of the play. It was so big, the aesthetic, which was just thrilling and so refreshing after all the oh so arty plays I've seen on that very stage.
But otherwise, gosh yes, loved the sheer inventiveness of the set. That the caravan was much smaller when it came down in Oz and opened out in this crazily cracked way. That Emerald City was like a big techno club, complete with thumping music and the words all snazzy and elegant on this elegant jewel coloured fractal screen, and the guard was like a bouncer. Guard and bouncer and Wizard all being the same guy, hee. I didn't particularly like the vocal twitchiness of his performances, Alirio Zavarce, but when he also played viola in the band down below, that was just fabulous. And the way he kept twitching his big moustache as the bouncer was TOO funny! He was a little tedious as the DJ, just like he was as the magician back in Kansas. *shrug*
God, it's such a bitter disappointment when the Wizard is unmasked. I still feel it, the dreariness of illusions decayed and people turning out to be weak charlatans. I never liked that bit. And here, the play didn't quite recover for that. Not for me, at least. In the film, it's a fabulous hat-trick to discover at the end that Dorothy dreamed it all. They didn't do that here. It ended just on Auntie Em and Dorothy running into each other's arms. Which was lovely as an emotional resolution but intellectually I still felt cheated by the Wizard's deception.
And you know, for the first time ever, I had this thought of "Wait a second, why the fuck couldn't you have told Dorothy right at the start that she could have gone home just by clicking her heels?" Glinda's line of "She wouldn't have believed me" is too weak for me. It took me a few seconds more of thought to realise that Dorothy had to want to go home. Cos, yeah, when she lands in Oz, she's so dazzled by adventure and new sights. And here they very much played up the attention thing, that Dorothy soaks up all the attention and even becomes a little egotistic at times. I'm pretty sure that's not in the film but I could be wrong. So yeah, I guess she has to go through a lot before she really and truly wants to go home. She has to miss Auntie Em. And yeah, now I remember Judy saying that. *nods*
I did like how Dorothy was so childlike in this production, dressed in this sack of dowdy material that becomes painfully colourful in Oz. It's a shapeless smock thing as opposed to the cliched twee fitted pinafore of the film. And her hair's just tied back, no horrible pigtails. It was exactly the right kind of childlike portrayal and Ursula totally worked it with the way she stood, her feet turned in and her shoulders hunched. Gawky shy twelve year old. Poifect.
And still there were these utterly naughty bits like at the end when the Scarecrow and Toto hug hard and Toto actually grabs that very tempting arse of the Scarecrow. I laughed out loud but was so relieved cos yeah, it was just begging for it! Hee! Mind you, the flipside of that was right at the beginning when Dorothy encounters the magician and he was creepily pedophiliac towards her. See what I mean about the darkness? It was very very good.
Like yesterday, I really want the soundtrack. Those arrangements were so great and I would love to immerse myself in the vocal nuances, in the altered lyrics.
And yeah, I'm still puzzling over the symbolism of the ruby slippers. Because I'm a filthy mind, naturally my first thought was "is it a sexual thing? No, that was Red Riding Hood's hood being a clitoris thing. Huh. Maybe not." But now I realise more than one article of apparel can represent female genitalia and power, can't it? Sparkly red shoes as a symbol of female power. Hell fucking yes. Awesomeness. Best decision those filmmakers ever did, to make them red to take advantage of Technicolour. *beams* And both the Aunt and I totally missed the moment when they go from the dead witch's feet to Dorothy's feet, me more so cos I was watching one of the Munchkins who had lost a bit from his camera and I wanted to see whether he'd try to fix it onstage. He didn't.
Both the Aunt and I were wondering what the kids made of the play. Firstly, because the visuals were so set apart from the film. And secondly, because the depictions seemed so very adult. But of course we're looking at it as adults. I bet the kids only saw what they wanted and ignored what they didn't immediately understand. It was a great production that way, playing on so many levels of understanding.
The applause was a bit tepid which was a shame cos it's the final day of performance. And the very last performance must have or is just about to start.
Oh man, I'm so glad we went. Now I'm almost tempted to buy the film and read the book and investigate all those analyses. And yes, it was a constant source of squee that I was watching The Wizard Of Oz in the actual Emerald City of my darling Sydney. Hee!
*sighs happily and toddles off*