The Wizard of Oz

We (Daisy and I) went to see a matinee performance of the Wizard of Oz at The Royal Festival Hall within the Southbank Cenre.

My old friend Mark O'Neil (We worked at Carlton together) who now does design and technological stuff for ENO (English National Opera) aquired free tickets, so off we went.


It was good, it wasn't great, but it was good, i thought Dorothy was a bit inconsistent, she didn't seem to be able to decide if she was overacting or playing it down, she seemed to swap from one to the other throughout the play/musical/performance, unless it was just rubbish speakers and i didn't notice.

Or perhaps she was playing a rather truthful portrayal of Judy Garland, after-all Judy was on so many uppers and downers by this stage she probably didn't know if she was coming or going, especially if she was acting against a Scarecrow a Tin Man and a Cowardly Lion.

But anyway, we did thoroughly enjoy the whole occasion, Daisy was a bit small and had to sit on the armrest in-between our seats for some of it so she could see what was going on, and she didn't like the bangs as the Wicked Witch of the West entered and left the stage, but she did love Glinda and Dorothy and the little children playing the munchkins.



In fact at the end, she was a bit concerned that the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion didn't come and take a bow (even though i had explained they were playing the parts of the farm hands as well, and had to change back for the final wake up scene) but she was mostly concerned that the children didn't come on for a bow. (I think Lucy told me once that there are rules to do with how long children can be on set, so i guess seeing as they are only in the first half of the show, they were sent home to rest ready for the later performance)

That is a Dorothy doll that Daisy is clutching, which was probably the highlight of the day, we bought Iris a similar Cowardly Lion dolly but Iris is not so impressed with her gift.

Note the bizarre huge plasma screen above the stage (is that what it's called?) which just seemed like a total waste of money.
I can think of lots of ways they could have used it to much better use.
The Wizard of Oz was written on it before the show started, but that could have easily been a banner, and then during the performance it displayed strange abstract interpretations of what was going on down below, which was all a bit of a waste of time really. (OK, some of the illustrations were nice, but others were rubbish)
You can see in this bottom pic when Dorothy meets the Scarecrow that they've scribbled some straw above onto the screen, ok, some straw is perhaps pointing in the right direction but it didn't even move as far as i can remember.
And when the four of them meet the wizard, they didn't even have his huge magnified face up above (like in the film).

All very strange.

Or i'm not arty enough.