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The Wiz (Adapted from the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum) by William F. Brown and Charlie Smalls

2019; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 71; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/tj.2019.0018

1086-332X

Eric M. Glover,

Theatre and Performance Studies

Reviewed by: The Wiz (Adapted from the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum) by William F. Brown and Charlie Smalls Eric M. Glover THE WIZ (ADAPTED FROM THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ, BY L. FRANK BAUM). By William F. Brown and Charlie Smalls. Directed by Kent Gash and choreographed by Wendell Howlett. Ford’s Theater Society, Ford’s Theater, Washington, D.C. March 24, 2018. What distinguished the Ford’s Theater Society production of The Wiz were its aesthetic aims and ambitions. The musical tells the story of Dorothy, a working-class, Midwestern black girl who finds herself in the path of a tornado that lands her in the land of the Munchkins. As a result, Addaperle the Good Witch of the North, a fairy godmother without magic powers, directs Dorothy to take the yellow brick road to the Emerald City to see the Wiz, who in turn directs her to kill Evillene the Wicked Witch of the West in exchange for going back home to Kansas with him. Glinda the Good Witch of the South, Lion, Scarecrow, and Tinman teach Dorothy that, because the Emerald City is only as good as the Emerald City citizen who is at the helm, she has to believe in herself. The Ford’s production made the case that musical theatre has always been a home for blacks, whose influence on the narrative genre is evidence of feeling completely at home on the stage. Click for larger view View full resolution Christopher Michael Richardson (Lion), Ines Nassara (Dorothy), Hasani Allen (Scarecrow), and Kevin McAllister (Tinman) in The Wiz. (Photo: Carol Rosegg.) Director Kent Gash and choreographer Wendell Howlett created a mutually reflexive relationship between the fiction of live performance onstage and the reality of everyday life offstage. Indeed, the direction and choreography combined to signify on race and representation by generating the affective and cognitive powers of representational visibility between actor and audience. The interpolation of Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther, John Landis’s Coming to America, and President Barack Obama in the book, along with the integration of the sounds of go-go [End Page 116] music in the orchestrations, of Bruno Mars in Jobari Parker-Namdar’s performance as the Wiz, and of the title sequence of Bill Cosby’s The Cosby Show in the choreography, belied the myth that blacks have no culture. Conscious and unconscious references to Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s Revelations, the back to Africa musicals of George Walker and Bert Williams, and the Cotton Club, among others, granted audiences permission to ease on down the road with Dorothy. The direction and the choreography encouraged black audiences in particular to claim their cultural baggage in the creation and the maintenance of the American musical. Click for larger view View full resolution The cast of The Wiz. (Photo: Carol Rosegg.) The direction and choreography also served to make the case that black women’s and girls’ lives matter. Monique Midgette’s Aunt Em/Addaperle/Evillene, Ines Nassara’s Dorothy, and Awa Sal Secka’s Glinda encompassed an entire range of black women’s and girls’ emotions in America and Oz: anger, fear, joy, and love. Ghosted by Negro-Sarah in Adrienne Kennedy’s Funnyhouse of a Negro and the seven ladies in Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf, Dorothy found home in herself and her voice by organizing community and seeking support with Addaperle and Glinda. In the production, the black women and girl citizens of Oz, much like those of America, learned how to survive and thrive despite government policies affecting them negatively. Set, costume, lighting, and sound design were important in helping to maintain the revival of the musical that Gash’s direction and Howlett’s choreography demanded. By making the white, two-story-high farmhouse in which Aunt Em and Uncle Henry raised Dorothy and Toto the North Star of the production, Jason Sherwood’s scenic design ensured that everyone knew, even if they were never close in body, that Dorothy’s family was never far in spirit. Dave Bova’s and J. Jared Janas’s hair and makeup design, taken together with Kara...