The Wizard of Oz

This production is the Crucible's 2017 Christmas show. I saw it on 13 December 2017, at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield.

The Wizard of Oz

Overall, I personally believe that the best factor of The Wizard of Oz at the Crucible Theatre was the music. I liked the style of the music and I was impressed by the way the music was different but familiar to the film and I though they implemented the additional music into the play well. The Jitterbug song and music was very jazzy and really suited the dance and was a real highlight for me. Another clever musical number was the Tin Man’s song and dance performance. In this, the cast and musicians used metal appliances and objects such as pans and spoons to really emphasise him being made of metal and clunky.

Apart from the different music, the play followed the same linear plot as the original film, with a song whenever a new area or character was introduced. The cast was interesting, as it was comprised of a lot of black actors and actresses such as Dorothy. I thought that the best actor from the cast was Jonathan Broadbent who played the Lion and Zeke. He was dynamic and really made his characters come alive; also his New York Bronx accent was extremely good and contrasted to all the other characters' Kansas accents.  

The use of puppets to portray characters such as the Wizard and Toto were very effective and clever. The wizard was a massive mechanical puppet, which was puppeted by a few hidden people making it seem more imposing and daunting than it actually was. However, Toto’s puppeteer, Rhiannon Wallace, was present on stage and used her physical acting to really convey Toto’s feelings to the audience. I thought this was clever and really grabbed my attention. 

The stage was circular and lited up for different sequences in the play to show the transformation between the real world and Oz. The lighting was also used to create different spaces and was demonstrated particularly well in the musical numbers Yellow Brick Road and Jitterbug with the stage floor lighting up yellow to show the path and the stage going dark and displaying lights on the significant parts of the stage respectively.  The design difference of the two worlds was very clever with Kansas being filled with dark and dull colours whereas Oz was very vibrant and bright. 

Overall, The Wizard of Oz was very good and did the original film justice whilst being unique in its own way.  And it was not only me who liked it, Clare Brennan from The Guardian gave it five stars saying, “Wow I did not see that coming". I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys musicals and fun.  Finally, it got a standing ovation at the end and that is good for any performance, isn’t it?  

Author

Alfie Hall

Alfie Hall

This author has no bio :(

Recent posts by this author

View more posts by Alfie Hall

1 Comments

  • Luke Taylor

    On 3 January 2018, 10:52 Luke Taylor Contributor commented:

    Wizard of Oz at the theatre? Love it!

Post A Comment

You must be signed in to post a comment. Click here to sign in now

You might also like

West End Actor Interrogates Stereotyping Faced by Latinx People in Soho Theatre Solo Show

West End Actor Interrogates Stereotyping Faced by Latinx People in Soho Theatre Solo Show

by Daniel Miller

Read now