Even without the ubiquitous Wicked, there is no shortage of Frank L Baum-related theatre, from The Wiz in Manchester last Christmas to this year’s trips to Oz via Cardiff and Glasgow. Nikolai Foster’s carnivalesque take on the material (using the adaptation by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Jeremy Sams) acknowledges this climate of overkill in an Emerald City metropolis crowded with billboards advertising The Wiz, Return to Oz and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. This is an in-joke too far – how can retellings of Dorothy’s adventures exist within this fictional world? – but it does demonstrate the challenge of standing out and not absorbing myriad other versions by Oz-mosis.
In Georgina Onuorah, the show has a winning Dorothy who shoulders the burdens of being witch-killer, life coach and liberator. Costumes and comedy are the strong suits, with Rachael Canning’s designs often combining the two. Her denizens of Oz are catwalk-ready in glittery jackets, ruched puffball dresses, even a giant chartreuse teddy bear’s head. Canning designed the puppets, too: not just the frolicking Toto, expressively manipulated by Ben Thompson, but the cawing crows worn on the heads of (and operated by) the company.
