STAGE REVIEW : Quest for Oz Never Gets Out of Kansas

L. Frank Baum’s classic children’s tale “The Wizard of Oz” lives, thanks to the 1939 MGM motion picture. Who could forget Jack Haley’s heartfelt Tinman, or Bert Lahr’s wise-cracking Cowardly Lion, or Judy Garland’s wide-eyed Dorothy?

No one, that’s who. The film is shown on television so often that a familiarity with “The Wizard of Oz” has become something of a cultural imperative-- everybody has seen this film. Lines from the film, such as Dorothy’s “I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore,” and the Wicked Witch’s “I’ll get you, my pretty” are so widely known that they have become a part of Americana.

Starlight Musical Theatre’s current production of “The Wizard of Oz” was adapted from the movie screenplay and makes no attempt to update the film. In fact, this production strives to re-create the film’s inherent magic. Characters wear replicas of costumes from the film, sing the same songs and even say the same words.

(Baum wrote “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” in 1899, and it had its stage debut in 1902. The movie significantly altered the music and some parts of the story.)

Starlight’s technical staff also went all out to reproduce the film’s spectacle, crafting pyrotechnic displays, “flying” entrances and exits and some elaborate projected images.

Unfortunately, this staging misses the point. MGM’s “The Wizard of Oz” is a classic film because of great acting and transcendent characterizations, not because of special effects or costumes. Starlight’s “The Wizard of Oz” focuses on the external machinery of “Wizard,” and the mechanism quickly breaks down.

Don and Bonnie Ward, Starlight’s producing artistic directors, directed and choreographed this production with a “bigger is better” mentality. The duo incorporated 12 child actors (Munchkins), 18 dancers and 17 scene changes into this show. What they failed to realize is “The Wizard of Oz” is primarily a delicate coming-of-age tale revolving around four characters.

The Wards faced an uphill battle from the start. The film “The Wizard of Oz” is constructed with numerous short scenes placed back to back. In the film, a transition from, say, the haunted forest to the witch’s castle is an instantaneous cutaway. In this stage version, such a transition calls for a massive, time-consuming scene change. Because of the many scene-change interruptions, the Starlight staging fails to build any momentum.

The venue compounds the problem. It is difficult to convey subtle emotions in the cavernous Civic Theatre, and this cast struggles to communicate with the audience.

Again, adapting from a screenplay created problems. In 1939, director Victor Fleming zoomed in on Ray Bolger’s tender smile when the Wizard gave him a heart; in 1991, the Ward’s were afforded no such luxury. The performances in this production are uniformly distant and wholly uninteresting.

Thirteen-year-old Adrienne Stiefel is credible as Dorothy. Although the actress seems a bit stiff on stage early in the show, she hits all her marks in Act II and settles into a solid performance. Stiefel’s singing is her strong suit--she expresses both technical skill and emotional clarity in her solo number, “Over the Rainbow.”

Of the three traveling companions, only Darryl Ferrera musters a fairly textured performance as the Cowardly Lion. Ferrera holds an advantage over the Scarecrow and the Tinman, however, in that his character gets all the slapstick retorts and comic punch lines. Shelby Grimm (Tinman) and Timothy Smith (Scarecrow) both look the part, but, in this show, they are just expositional figures. Their costumes preempt their characterizations.

A few of the stage effects--the tornado scene in particular--are truly magnificent, but most of the theatrical devices in this “Wizard” seem silly and actually take the audience out of the play.

“Good Witch of the North” Glinda (Patti Goodwin) rides on and off stage suspended on a garish swing, a slow-moving stage device that seems more appropriate for a Liberace concert.

Toto the dog (played by a real dog, Lulu) misses many of her cues throughout the evening, inciting giggles from the audience. When Lulu scampers stage left while Dorothy et al. are skipping stage right, the crowd invariably laughs and watches the cute little pooch upstage the human performers.

Starlight’s “The Wizard of Oz” depends too much on stage technology to tell the tale, causing it to suffer a lack of feeling.

If it only had a heart.

“THE WIZARD OF OZ”

By L. Frank Baum. Adapted from the MGM motion picture screenplay by John Kane. Music and lyrics by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg. Directed and choreographed by Don and Bonnie Ward. Musical director is Lloyd Cooper. Set by Paul Wonsek. Sound by Bill Lewis. Lighting by Gregory Allen Hirsch. Costumes co-ordinated by Juli Bohn and Robyn Conter. Stage manager is Maura J. Murphy. With Adrienne Stiefel, Timothy Smith, Shelby Grimm, Darryl Ferrera, James Michael Hayes, Patti Goodwin, Pamela Hamill and Bob Howard. At 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays, with 2 p.m. matinees on Saturday and Sunday, through June 2. Tickets are $19-$30. Civic Theatre, 202 C St., downtown, 544-7800.