By Harry Haun
19 Jun 2009

The Wiz stars Ashanti (with Nigel, front) Joshua Henry, James Monroe Iglehart and Orlando Jones; LaChanze, director Thomas Kail and guest Gayle King
photo by Aubrey Reuben

As Kansas farmhouses-in-hurricanes fly, The Emerald City is only a hop, skip and jump down a yellow brick road — and, on June 18, Dorothy Gale & Friends again gleefully hit those celebrated bricks for a revival of The Wiz, one instigated by City Center Encores! as the third annual offering in its Summer Stars series.

The avowed intent of the series is to give stars a shot at shows they ordinarily would not have, and this Tony-winning Best Musical of 1975 allows the strong-lunged Ashanti some quality-stage time outside an R&B recording studio.

Simply said, she sang the socks off Charlie Smalls' score (also a Tony winner), and the audience seemed to be with her every note of the way, exploding into wild whoops and applause in mid-number throughout like —well, like true fans.

"This is my first time on stage," the diva declared, visibly relieved, at the post-show party that curled through the City Center lobby and out into the adjacent atrium.

"I felt so much love tonight. It was amazing, just to feel the love from the audience and to be attached to such a talented cast. It was great. I'm very blessed indeed."

Role-wise, she found much to relate to about the character she played. "I think Dorothy and I have a lot of similarities in life. She started out very naοve, and she learned on her journey to become stronger and stronger — and to, obviously, believe. It sorta parallels my life, starting in the music industry and just being naοve and just learning and becoming strong. I think that's why Dorothy and I—well, we jell."

The part also parallels her name, which is her real name and on her birth certificate. "It means Woman of Strength," injected an attractive matron who wore a necklace with the word "Momanager" written across a large heart. "It's an African name for my African queen," explained her mother, Tina Douglas.

L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has been translated into a variety of worlds, starting — most famously and abidingly — with Judy Garland's classic 1939 movie, which television annually reran into an American institution.

Currently, it is — playfully played from a villainous point of view — Broadway's top-grossing show, pulling in $1.5 million last week alone, as Wicked.

Book writer William F. Brown gave Oz an African-American reading, which matched up neatly and transformingly with Smalls' pop-rock score, and they were off to see the wizard. George Faison choreographed, and Geoffrey Holder costume-designed and directed, both of them to Tony-winning effect.

Mrs. Holder — the still-stunning Carmen De Lavallade — was in elegant attendance and said she enjoyed herself: "It was great hearing that score again."

The look of the show, she conceded, was "quite different" from her husband's vision. He, she hastened to explain, had a good excuse for missing the opening. "He's working tonight in a recording studio," she said. "He's working on a new album."

The Wiz kids now in charge of the show's aggressively overhauled look came to fame with a more recent Tony-winning musical — In the Heights: director Thomas Kail, choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler, music director Alex Lacamoire and costume designer Paul Tazewell.

Kevin McCollum and Jeffrey Seller — having produced In the Heights and, in effect, the talent above — were clucking contentedly at the after-party. Opted McCollum: "It was great seeing all the In the Heights kids really create such a different piece. They're all too young to repeat themselves."

Jack Viertel, who did produce this revival, ducked the obvious question that The Wiz seemed more expensively mounted than its two preceding Summer Stars offerings. "I'm not actually sure, but I don't think it's any different from Gypsy and Damn Yankees," he said. "I think it has to do with wanting to make it look different and having different designers and different design ideas. We hired a bunch of people who were the next generation. They have unbelievable imagination and energy, and they love the show."

"The Wiz deserved a reimagining," contended Kail. "The show is full of life, and it's vital and it's now — even if it was from 1975 — so Encores! is the perfect place to do it because it protects the script and the original orchestrations. It allows you to trust the work and go. We had a great team, and we just went with it."

Surprisingly little cutting was done on the original book, he said. "A couple of little things, here and there. The writer, Bill Brown, and I sat down and spent a couple of afternoons going through it — things he suggested, things I suggested — but they were very, very small, little kind of internal, microscopic beat things."

Populating the show with a variety of new talent was one of Kail's strong suits, but he passes that credit along. "We had wonderful casting directors, Jay Binder and Sara Schatz over at Binder Casting. I have to say there were so open to new ideas, to trying things out that maybe they didn't want to. We'd say, 'How about this?' and they'd say, 'How about this?' and we all just kinda mixed it up and tried to create an alchemy of the right group of performers on stage."

Blankenbuehler, who gave In the Heights all the right, Tony-winning moves, saw this job as keeping The Wiz in a pretty perpetual state of motion.

"When we first took the piece over," he recalled, "we thought, 'This has got to be almost like a story ballet. It just never stops.' I wanted it to never stop moving. It's, like, big impressionistic strokes. As each number came along, I just sorta let my brain go. I didn't jump in with any one big idea. I just sorta took it as it came.

View the Entire Photo Gallery Ashanti Photo by Aubrey Reuben

"I had a lot to work with. It's a good 15 numbers, and there are 15 dancers. For me, that's the most dancers I've ever had. In In the Heights,, I had seven dancer-dancers. In 9 to 5 I have eight dancer-dancers, so 15 is extraordinary."

Tanya Birl, who is the show's dance captain and, at various points in the evening, a crow or poppy, seconded that. "The dancing is amazing," she said. "Andy totally outdid himself. He really made the dancers a feature in the show."

On top of everything else, Blankenbuehler gives good hurricane. There are several startling visual effects along the way — like a breakaway set that flies into the wings revealing the orchestra perched in midair on polls. Conductor Lacamoire admitted he'd never been that high before for a performance —"on such a high podium," he clarified. "It's the first time, but I loved it. I was happy to be featured that way."

It makes quite an entrance for a whole orchestra. "It's very dramatic. Andy and Tommy thought of that, and I am very happy to be part of that little drama."

Lighting designer Ken Billington, who gave ominous storm clouds to the billowing fabrics on stage, was likewise pleased with the evening. "Fabulous," he assessed, in fact. "We were all on the same page. All the designers and the director and the choreographer — we all made it happen. This is a good retelling of the story. The original was brilliant, and this is totally different — and brilliant, also." Continued...

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