The Wiz premiered in Baltimore in 1974, moving to Broadway the following year where it won seven Tonys, including the award for Best Musical.
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Well, from the opening moments until newcomer Shanice Williams was called upon to deliver THE 11 o’clock song, the one that makes the Broadway crowd that’s antsy and sitting for a few hours in a darkened theatre rise to their feet and scream, in this case Home I simply could not turn away. “Brand new day? How about buying some brand new products”.
There were a number of noticeable updates to the storyline of The Wiz Live.
The list of spine tingling performances was endless. Stephanie Mills, who played the original Dorothy, appears as Auntie Em in the The Wiz Live.
It helped that The Wiz – an adaptation of the familiar Wizard of Oz story featuring black performers and tropes – is an ensemble piece; its narrative is more or less evenly distributed among nine main players. Michael Jackson co-starred as the Scarecrow, with Nipsey Russell as the Tin Man and Ted Ross as the Lion. And I liked the animatronic Wiz-face from which emerged Queen Latifah’s Wiz, who was more affecting after she was exposed as the fraud the Wiz is, than when she was caked with green make-up playing the egomaniacal Wiz.
This version of The Wiz is being planned for an extended life – on Broadway – and this telecast will surely boost that effort.
The network’s third annual televised musical fared much better, both in ratings and in reviews, than last year’s “Peter Pan”, starring Allison Williams. She figured it would be “impossible” to land the role of Dorothy, but made a decision to give it a shot in order to get her first major audition out of the way. “Thx for the courage to put this on the air”. SSSSSING!’ – me, 7 times so far. Kristen Chenoweth, who starred in another Oz adaptation, Wicked, messaged, “Loving this one!!” “And @dray noted: “#TheWizLive is a reminder that we are, and have always been, more than our pain. This Nov. 30, 2015, image released by NBC shows Mary J Blige as Evillene during a dress rehearsal of “The Wiz Live!” in NY. In some ways, they felt like the natural conclusion of television in the social-media era: an extraordinary pileup of visual spectacle, so-bad-it’s-good performances, and psychedelic WTF-iness, with plentiful advertising breaks in which to compose social-media commentary on the phenomenon unfolding. Kenny Leon (Tony victor, “A Raisin in the Sun”) is stage director and Matthew Diamond is TV director, with Harvey Fierstein (three-time Tony victor, “Torch Song Trilogy”, “Hairspray” and “La Cage aux Folles”) providing new written material.
The Wiz Live!, NBC’s latest live musical extravaganza, scored solid if not spectacular ratings Thursday. But that would have been awkward without sustained applause.
NBC’s live musical, “The Wiz Live!”, brought in 11.1 million viewers on Thursday night, according to NBC.
Viewers seemed to agree.
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“The Wiz Live!” follow’s last year’s NBC production of “Peter Pan”, featuring Allison Williams, and two years after viewers tuned in to see Carrie Underwood in “The Sound of Music.”.
