Top of the bill this week is Jayden Bravissimo following down that road…
There’s no place like home and there’s nothing like leaving a good thing alone. When I heard that Andrew’s Lloyd Webber and Jeremy Sams were serving up a musical adaptation of The Wizard of Oz (London Palladium), I feared for Dorothy and Toto. Happy to report this buoyant production, imported from the wonderful Curve Theatre in Leicester, is a delightful mix of imagination and technological wizardry. In fact you could be forgiven for thinking that at times we are actually part of a video game (I have never played one) which takes us on a familiar journey, but one that is very much a product of the twenty first century. That includes Georgina Onuorah’s Dorothy, a feisty, streetwise gal who has the voice of a lark. This is inspired casting and pays dividends throughout with Nikolai Foster’s buoyant direction also making the most of her comic timing.
When we start whooshing down the Yellow Brick Road, the visuals transform the space into an incredible spectacle. It has elements of Blade Runner spliced with Las Vegas leading to Oz that is stupendous in every sense and the Emerald City which could be any futuristic urban centre, even Shanghai or New York, but here everything glows green, representing as they do the dollar, Wall Street and the malevolent influence of filthy money. Designer Colin Richmond has taken from many but created something very original and striking. Along the way Dorothy meets her friends, yes that’s where the “friends of Dorothy” come from. They are a terrific bunch with Louis Gaunt as a deliciously sweet Scarecrow, Jason Manford the very loveable and dipsy Lion, and an incredibly kinetic Tin Man played by Ashley Banjo, an astonishing animatronic creation that had the audience eating out of his metal hands.
At times the effects – which include superb projections, both colour and black and white, by Douglas O’ Connell – are overwhelming, making you yearn for something more traditional and akin to the original 1939 movie. It does happen, making it that much more enjoyable as when Onuorah sings the iconic Over The Rainbow (apparently one of the most oft requested funeral songs) which she does so beautifully. Conversely Shaun Barclay’s choreography is skittish, verging on bonkers at times, but absolutely in tune to with the overall camp concept. The most over the top performance comes from Dianne Pilkington’s Wicked Witch who has an absolute ball, but even she and the rest of the gang are trumped by the most gorgeous mutt at the end of the rainbow. Toto the dog, manoeuvred by Ben Thompson, is the kind of puppet and puppeteering that have made War Horse and The Life of Pi such huge hits. Every move and look are a delight. Video may have killed the radio star but techie games will never trump this stellar analogue canine.
Meanwhile I was back in Guildford for a journey of a different type…
Based on the novel by Jules Verne and adapted and directed by Juliet Forster, Around The World In Eighty Days (Yvonne Arnaud) sees a band of travelling circus performers embark on a daring feat: to recreate the adventures of Phileas Fogg as he sets off on his race around the world which is a wager he has taken on to achieve the impossible. A Juliet Forster’s production plays with genres and storytelling, a melting pot of circus, pantomime and straight laced drama. At its core is a belting performance by Alex Phelps as Fogg, oozing quintessential quirky Englishness coupled with the wit and physicality of a talented performer who relishes taking on the role.
The twist in the tale is how Forster weaves in the story of journalist Elizabeth Corcoran with the nom de plume “Nelly Bly” who in 1889 tried to challenge Fogg’s record which of course was fiction. The twist in the twist was the attempt by Elizabeth Bisland who decided to attempt it going the opposite way round. Still with me? Bly won and of such stories, legends are born. The plot and sub plots lend themselves well to a circus setting though in truth the general chaos and over the top acting is straight out of pantomime and the various characters clown around and cause mayhem and jollity wherever they go. Jean Passepartout, Fogg’s assistant, played with total joie de vivre by Wilson Benedito, is a clown cum narrator as he makes sure all the young’uns in the audience don’t get lost by all the shenanigans. Similarly Eddie Mann who plays Inspector Fixx, the detective who follows Fogg – Bly was also followed by a detective on the order of her Sugar Daddy husband – is a very gifted actor perfectly suited to this romp.
This is an excellent family show with dollops of very enjoyable, often hilarious, entertainment and if at times the silliness bordered incomprehensible inanity we forgive them. Standout moments include a uproarious sea storm and a difficult see saw routine which was brilliantly carried off. A show to sit back and enjoy.
Finally, Athasha Lyonais encounters a defiant doctor…
Dr Semmelweis (dir. Tom Morris) is now at the Harold Pinter Theatre, having had a successful run in Bristol last year. Hungarian doctor Ignaz Semmelweis (Mark Rylance) is working in an obstetrics wing in Vienna hospital – a building at the cutting edge of medical research and investigation – the focal point of which is their ‘Dead House’ – a place where medical students are performing autopsies on fresh cadavers, in the hope of bringing about a new era of healthfulness and scientific wonder.
However, the optimistic frenzy of new discovery is tempered by a personal horror – Semmelweis is sensitive, uniquely so compared to his peers, to the frequent deaths he witnesses in his time working obstetrics – he is unable to shake off the dying screams of the mothers who succumb to postpartum infections, particularly ‘childbed fever’. Worse is the inconvenient truth most doctors are trying hard to ignore – mothers who are tended to by midwives are not dying at the rates doctors are shrugging off. Are the so-called ‘experts’ the cause of this? Semmelweis’s observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions of the time and he did not suffer fools gladly whatever their status.
One would be forgiven for thinking this would allude to the recent public health furore around COVID-19, however it was written beforehand; but there is a lesson to be drawn from Dr Semmelweis. A terrified expert, trying in vain to convince his higher-ups to care about a crisis that is killing people on a daily basis feels closer to the current existential horror of the climate crisis – think a less heavy-handed Don’t Look Up and you’ll have a good idea of the sort of weighty subject material this play is encouraging you to think about.
The production is engrossing and Rylance is superb, and the vignettes featuring the ghosts of his lost patients, choreographed by New York City Ballet alumni Antonia Francheschi, are in equal parts haunting and technically impressive.
The Wizard of Oz – www.lwtheatres.co.uk
Around the World in Eighty Days – on tour
Dr Semmelweis – www.semmelweistheplay.com