ĭirected by Nikolai Foster, the production will feature the film score-including "Over the Rainbow," "Follow the Yellow Brick Road," "and "We're Off to See the Wizard"-with additional songs penned by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. The touring production will open with a holiday season at the Liverpool Empire beginning December 13 with additional dates to be announced. Frank Baum story as immortalized in the 1939 MGM film featuring music and lyrics by Harold Arlen and E.Y.
#Andrew lloyd webber wizard of oz movie#
While much of the 1939 movie "had me metaphorically reaching for the sick-bag" – hence the gritted teeth, perhaps – "I did at least manage to sit through it without throwing up in the aisle."ĭon't say: … but we've heard he's lost his whizz.Following its summer engagement at the London Palladium, the new production of The Wizard of Oz-the musical based on the L.
But is it Charles Spencer-proof? Just about, it seems.
#Andrew lloyd webber wizard of oz tv#
Billington concludes that regardless of the show's quality, "people will go to see both the winner of the TV talent contest and to luxuriate in the sumptuous visuals", and that "in the end the show will be critic-proof". Oz made £10m just in pre-sales, and perhaps as a result, Purves has "a helpless sense that it's a … predetermined hit". In turn, write the Whingers, this meant he'd be "fascinated by the odd smell on a floorboard or a glimpse of something in the wings" – and, as a result, "Toto's honesty showed up everything going on around him as the fragile tissue of lies on which theatre is built."īut in the end, who really cares what the critics think, eh? Not even the critics themselves, apparently. He – or they? – tended to be "marvellously, completely unfazed by the drama or spectacle going on around him".
Some very creditable barking was done bang on cue, too."īut Toto's performance did have unexpected side-effects, says the West End Whingers. And what a performance they gave, says Letts: "numerous doggy entrances and exits were performed without straying, scratching or so much as a hint of cocked leg.
For Little M, who blogs at Mummy's Little World, "the true star of the show was Toto!" Why so, you might ask? Well, for starters, says Little M, "there was a REAL dog on stage!"Įxcept, if the write-up from Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail is anything to go by, Toto wasn't just played by one West Highland terrier, but four. For some bloggers, such an argument was merely academic. Hope, he writes, "lacks the heart-catching vulnerability of the young Judy Garland". "Serviceable" was how the Independent's Paul Taylor described Hope, while the Telegraph's Spencer thought her merely "competent". But judging by last night's performance," continues Sloan, who has moved suddenly into italics, "Danielle will ensure the Lord has yet another smash on his hands." "She knows she has huge ruby slippers to fill," – boom, boom – "reprising the role made famous by Judy Garland in the 1939 movie classic. Her performance combines innocence with easy charm, and her voice soars." He goes on: "It's a vindication of the TV casting show – a phenomenon readily mocked, yet capable of unearthing a likable, credible new talent." She, says Hitchings, "makes a winning impression. Hitchings is more unconditional with his praise of the show's lead: 18-year-old Danielle Hope, who plays Dorothy, and who won the part through a BBC talent contest. "The story is lucid and well-paced," he proffers, "though the technological wizardry occasionally obscures its inherent magic." Henry Hitchings, writing in the Evening Standard, is slightly more forgiving – but only just. "he paradox of the evening," writes the Guardian's very own Michael Billington, perhaps with his little finger raised to the corner of the lip, "is that it suffers the same dilemma as the Tin Man: it might have been so much more if it only had a heart." The Times's Libby Purves agrees: the show's "technology, polish, and scientifically calculated hype", she argues, end up "drowning the magic". Critics have mostly agreed on two things: that the production lacked soul and that, in writing as much, it was open season for every Oz-related metaphor in the book.
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