The witching hour.
One of the most iconic moments in 20th century Western cinema – Dorothy’s transition from sepia tone stencil-print to three-strip Technicolor – is perhaps one of the few filmic legacies kept alive in Caroline Bird’s kaleidoscopic adaptation of Frank L. Baum’s original novel of 1900. Bird instead refracts and collides Baum’s story with a subtle parody of the film, shoehorned into the brand of Northern Stage by director Mark Calvert, known for its ambitious left-field Christmas shows (even if they sometimes have nothing to do with Christmas).
The venue might well have viewed a trip to the Emerald City as a metaphor for its own journey in 2015. Christmas there has lacked a winning festive energy over the last two years, with Dark Woods, Deep Snow and Get Santa! wobbling on the tracks. But The Wonderful Wizard of Oz goes a long way in restoring some seasonal joy in the main house, as this travelling carnival-themed production of witchcraft and wit lights up the classic story in dazzling, even startlingly hallucinogenic, ways.
Kansas is substituted for Greysby (as colourless as the name suggests), Toto the Dog for Toto the Sock Puppet and the Yellow Brick Road for the Sun-Kissed Thoroughfare. Much of the story still follows the MGM classic of 1939 but we are introduced to a swathe of “new” characters en route. Dorothy (the gleeful Tessa Parr) encounters her familiar trio – Scarecrow (Maria Crocker), Tin Man, repackaged as Nick Chopper (Carl Kennedy) and The Lion (Michael Blair) – but is accompanied by a security team of Field Mouses (led by their Queen, the reliably delightful Ruth Johnson). Meanwhile, Glinda (Alice Blundell) is recast as a slightly more ambivalent character, willing to help Dorothy but seemingly satisfying her own agenda, too. And the mesmeric Zoe Lambert as The Wicked Witch often carries and binds the whole thing together.
Many grown-up audiences might return purely to see Rhys Jarman’s set design (recently there with Gecko’s Institute), as Dorothy lands in what looks like a cross between 17th century Venice and Assembly Bosco. A set of layered stages, each surrounded by multi-coloured festoon lighting, adds an almost Escher-like depth to proceedings. This slightly destabilising experience matches the collision of worlds, too, as real and fictional mingle in pleasing, if not conventional, ways (the characters are dropped off at the local airport; they also get stuck in a lift with some top-quality Muzak).
Perhaps the greatest triumph, however, is the creative team that Mark Calvert has put together. The show’s reliance on puppets (the product of Tom Walton’s brilliant brain), a score of Liquorice Allsorts by composer Jeremy Bradfield and Nick Williams, and fantastical loopy lighting by Johnny Goodwin all synthesise so well. It really is a technically intricate beast and credit to the production team here, whose skill is visible in practically every single scene.
There are moments which allude to this script’s potential to chisel away at the original (the witches play a larger role in the construction of a matriarchy and The Lion falls in love with his – also male -squirrel assistant) but these plot lines could have been positioned as pivotal in reimagining the story for 2015. They end up feeling slightly tokenistic, as if Bird was wary about hitting children with *too much politics*. How might Glinda contest the binaries of Good and Evil that we are accustomed to in this story? How might the fraudulence of the “All Powerful Oz” be underscored even more? How do the relationships of the characters take aim at mainstream theatre’s white heterosexuality? Some scenes could be hacked back in favour of tackling the types of questions which the show prompts.
The audience leave filled with joy at this sparkling version of Oz, but also slightly frustrated by the type of Christmas show children are given to engage with. Northern Stage has tried to offer a more cerebral alternative for children over 7 in the past – and hasn’t always got it right, granted; this feels slightly closer to the creative fusion of fun and open-mindedness that could make Christmas at Northern Stage truly special.
