Dorothy: Back in oz

Dorothy: back in oz

A sequel to last year’s brilliant summer production - The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

I took both my boys along to Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds last summer for their production of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, a new take on the classic story with some nice local touches thrown in. We all had a great time, particularly enjoying the spectacular revolve and clever use of scenic panels moving across the stage.

This year, the sequel was announced - Dorothy Back in Oz - and my curiosity was immediately piqued, so I took my eldest along this time too. In the canon of the films, Return to Oz is infamous for its weird direction and creepy nature when compared to the, on the whole, nice nature of the original film. How then would that translate to a stage production in the same vein? And moreover, the general trend with sequels is that they are never as good as the original.

Spoiler alert: this one is. in fact, it’s better.

The opening number, a chicken singing with a chorus of chicks, is immediately raises smiles throughout the room and sets the tone perfectly - the show is brimming with joy and playfulness throughout, and indeed gives off an almost-panto air a few times with some of the jokes and fourth wall breaking comedy. The staging is a lot simpler this time, no revolve, but that’s no bad thing and the stagecraft is just as deftly handled here throughout. Between Morgan Brind’s jauntily angled set pieces and Dave Thwaites’ simple, unobtrusive but elegant and highly effective lighting designs, the show never feels as bare as the stage looks upon first entering. Also, shoutout to the really nicely used sliding platform which does a lot of the heavy lifting, figuratively and literally - a particular highlight for me was the first reveal of the gnome king - ominously sliding forward through swirling smoke pouring out of the doors at the back of the stage - eliciting a few very well earned gasps from some of the audience in the pit.

It is really lovely to have captions available for all of these performances, but their implementation needs more work.

This is a musical, and very joyfully performed by everyone it is, but I did feel a few times that it was hard to hear some of the lyrics - not helped by the delay of the captions movements meaning it wasn’t easy to use those as a backup either. I will say, I do think it’s wonderful that all performances of this production are captioned - as I believe is the running trend with all of the summer productions at this theatre now, fabulous - but they do need to be implemented better to really provide the best experience they can. As well as the slow speed of scrolling that I’ve already mentioned, I spotted quite a few discrepancies in what was said on stage to what was included in the captions, and none of the sound effects (more brilliant work from Chris Last on their design) were referenced in the captions at all - alright for me as someone who can hear, but a great shame for them to be missed by anyone who can’t and is relying on reading the captions to follow.

The songs themselves do seem to suffer a little from over repetition at times in my view, too - David Lewington is a fabulous composer and musical director, but unfortunately this wasn’t quite his usual calibre for me. For the most part, they are toe tappingly great fun, but the variety in the lyrics was lacking a little.

Still, lets go back to what there is to enjoy in this show, because there is an awful lot of that. I briefly mentioned the performances earlier, but to go into more detail with each - everyone deserves to be celebrated in some form, I think.

Safia Bartley as Billina the Chicken is an utter delight. The playfulness of her Welsh accent shining throughout, she is definitely a magnet for the attention in any scene she’s in. She opens the show, and makes a big lovely splash doing it. And her egg work is brilliant too.

Anya De Villiers as Dorothy is an excellent grounding for the whole show, with a beautiful singing voice and the right level of childishness required for this role. Not her fault at all, but I did find that her character was a bit back and forth - she starts off uncharacteristically grumpy in the real world, then suddenly turns back to “normal” in Oz, before finding more of that grumpiness later. A bit discordant for the expectation of kind-natured Dorothy, but she handles the changes very nicely throughout.

Leonie Spilsbury is clearly having great fun with her roles in this, firstly as mum, and then she really gets to sink her teeth into the brilliant character of Princess Langwidere - eccentric and demanding, she could perhaps have been too scary, but she perfectly holds the line to what is needed for the show and is a lot of fun to watch. On top of that her singing voice is superb - there’s a reason Leonie is well known locally!

Nathaniel Purnell as Tik Tok is a nice safe pair of hands, not quite as hyper-energetically performed as last year’s tin man, but that’s no detraction - he has some very lovely moments of comedy, and his interactions with Dorothy are wholesome throughout. I do think we could have seen a little more of him, but what we get is great.

Another actor who is underused is Michael Lambourne, who is simply magnificent throughout. He is the only returning cast member from last year, and as he was then (playing the Wizard) he just isn’t in this enough. He plays the nerdy but naturally kind Bradley down to a tee, and then gets to let loose as the Gnome King with revel and oozing seediness. He also (I am guessing) provides some voices for smaller characters not seen (or not actual people) and as with last year he also gets a brief witty newsreader turn in the first half which is another highlight.

The stage in the interval

The Young Company (we saw the “chickens” team, I believe) round off this performance with the many ensemble roles, all played with aplomb - from singing sunflowers and menacing munchkins, it is sometimes the case that younger performers can seem to be just following along, but that’s absolutely not what happens here. Each one of them plays their parts with high energy and effort, clearly a testament to the power of the welcoming and encouraging dual direction of Owen Calvert-Lyons and David Whitney. In their slightly more extended roles, Elizabeth as the Lioness and Francis as the Scarecrow are nicely realised additions to the lineup of characters.

I have to say, for all the effort that the marketing went to in bigging it up, the puppet head of Bamber - somehow taking the spot of the MacGuffin moving quite a lot of the plot forward - was very disappointing. Aside from the Act One finale (which I shan’t spoil) he didn’t really have much in the way of impact. On the subject of the plot again, I do also think (and my eldest agreed) that the resolution of threat in the closing moments of Act Two was really rather sudden, though the props used for it (again, avoiding spoilers) were a lovely bit of theatre magic.

Anyway, overall, are any of these issues enough to ruin the experience? Absolutely not. I was giggling, guffawing and grinning throughout. It’s a really fun show - even the creepier parts of the source material (a cupboard of severed heads, anyone?) are handled with enough good natured humour and care to not make them uncomfortable; and the emotionally rich moments are given plenty of heart. I would say that there is one of those that could have done with a bit more room to breathe - it is very swiftly ushered away again - but because the words are so perfectly chosen that hardly matters either.

This is a real summer treat, and as with every theatre out there at the moment, this beautiful one deserves your support here - do yourself a favour and get along to see this, sweep yourself away into the colourful joy and whimsical delights of Oz for a couple of hours - you’ll have a lovely time.

🥚🥚🥚🥚 / 5

Dorothy, Back in Oz is at Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds until Saturday 31st August, find out more and book your tickets here.