Gil Hates Everything

No, not the movie, but the next best thing – the movie brought to life on stage! Because – you demanded it!

This dates from 1987 and was apparently the bright idea of the Royal Shakespeare Company. It is, literally, the movie brought to life on stage, which means it still hasn’t got much to do with the book, and it’s not related to a 1945 stage production (which apparently featured an extra song for Dorothy called “Evening Star”). but it does mean they wrote a script which according to the wiki has almost all the dialogue from the screenplay, the complete original score, some songs which were cut from the movie (mostly reprises)… and then they appear to have thrown a large number of kids at it, because kids are cute, and I guess someone has to play all those Munchkins. If only they didn’t sing.

Having commented last week on how “Wicked” requires you to know this story, let’s assume that you do. It’s a popular Christmas movie, and it doesn’t hold up too badly as seventy-year-old movies go. So, why on earth do we need a live version? It’s slightly head-scratching that this exists.

However, as the songs go, they’re a combination of not-bad-for-1939 and actually-still-very-good: “Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead” is an absolutely great tune, and “If I Only Had The Nerve”, while requiring some tolerance of that New Yawk accent, made the most of that with some admirably dreadful stretched rhymes. (That’s really not how you pronounce ‘mouse’.) And lots of people like “Over The Rainbow”, although I don’t understand why we’re being instructed to weigh a pie once we get there ;-) On the other hand, “We’re Off To See The Wizard” has always been nauseating.

The soundtrack for this show is twelve tracks long, including an overture and reprise, so unless there’s lots of songs they didn’t bother including, I’m not convinced that this is all that much of a musical, or possibly it’s just pleasantly short. Either way, it seems harmless, but it doesn’t seem necessary. The singers on this CD are OK on their own terms, but you’ve got to have some serious tits** to think you can step into the shoes of Dorothy Gale when everyone in the audience is there because of Judy Garland. I’m sure it’s a spectacle, and it’s proven popular, but it doesn’t sound at all important.

Worryingly, Andrew Lloyd Webber is planning a brand-new production, building on the original but with new songs by him and Tim Rice, for 2011. Isn’t that lovely.

Random Panda awards “The Wizard Of Oz” four out of ten pieces of bamboo.

** What? Like saying ‘balls’ would work or any other anatomical option would be better…

(originally posted 2009)