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Carousel theater production puts dazzling new spin on classic musical
By Kerry Clawson
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published on Tuesday, Sep 09, 2008
With uber-inventive staging and costuming, Carousel Dinner Theatre has enlivened what could have been a timeworn tale of The Wizard of Oz.
As familiar as every line and song are to most folks — thanks to the beloved 1939 MGM movie starring Judy Garland — it's gratifying to see director Marc Robin build on this iconic piece of musical theater and create something new, dazzling and unique to the local stage.
The set's colors alone are beautiful, dominated by green, purple and gold proscenium anchors spelling a huge ''OZ'' on either side of the stage. A decorative yellow brick road wends across the proscenium arch, lighting up each stop along Dorothy's journey.
Costume designer Dale DiBernardo has more than outdone herself with this show, creating a magnificent array of costumes for 51 cast members, the largest in Carousel history. Her variety of vibrantly colored munchkin costumes for the children's cast is mind-boggling, from the sweetly petaled heads of the Lullaby League girls to the cute plaids and stripes of the Lollipop Guild boys.
No detail is overlooked here, from the huge, furry suit and perfectly curly mane for Lion to the pointy, prosthetic chin and nose for the Wicked Witch of the West. DiBernardo's piece de resistance is the brilliant white elegance of her Emerald City denizens' ensembles, repeating a sophisticated ruffled design element as if it were an opulent high-fashion line. The image is so crisp, it looks like it came straight out of a painting.
Director Robin makes good use of the house's numerous aisles to bring the actors into the audience. My 4-year-old and I were so close to the munchkins, lead actors and haunted forest cast members, we could have touched them.
I don't want to give away many of the show's striking surprises, but the number Jitterbug is one of them. It's a piece you don't see in the movie, with slithering black and yellow creatures in the haunted forest that crawled under guests' tables and leapt from ledges along the dining booths. Even though Dorothy and her cohorts are frightened at this point, the cute jitterbug dance they perform with these creatures softens some of the scariness.
The statuesque Lisa McMillan is ever-threatening as the witch, but there's only so much one can do with the role of Dorothy, which Kelsey Crouch-Pinter plays with appropriate sweetness. The musical's finest actor is Brian Hoffman as the blustering, lovable lion, who elicited plenty of laughs from both young and old.
One of the biggest hallmarks of Carousel's production is its ingenious use of puppetry to depict some of the story's most dramatic moments. They range from a giant mechanical-looking puppet to numerous smaller rod puppets, which are put to wondrous use creating the mood of a swarm of flying monkeys.
The effect of costumed actors integrated with puppets, often with elaborate headpieces, is reminiscent of The Lion King. Here, the magic is created by puppeteers Robin VanLear and Ian Patroni of Cleveland.
Carousel's Wizard of Oz has many elements of performance art, from the black-clad actors who use fabrics to create the illusion of a twister to the lovely dancers who portray the yellow brick road as well as intoxicating poppies.
Robin has made his haunted forest trees surprisingly comical, directing those actors as divas with attitude. Imagine male actors in mermaid-style gowns treated in camouflage colors, branches twisting from their heads, and you only begin to envision the hilarity.
The show's overall effect is so enchanting, it held my youngster's rapt attention throughout an entire evening performance, which ran until 10:40 p.m. The twister effects and the pyrotechnics accompanying the witch's arrivals and departures were mildly scary for my preschooler, but nothing she couldn't handle.
L. Frank Baum wrote the original The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1899. It has captured the imagination in many stage and movie renditions since. Now that the Broadway musical Wicked is so popular, it's neat to get back to Baum's story.
As it's told in the original tale, who says the world can't be seen through green-colored lenses?
Kerry Clawson can be reached at 330-996-3527 or kclawson@thebeaconjournal.com.
With uber-inventive staging and costuming, Carousel Dinner Theatre has enlivened what could have been a timeworn tale of The Wizard of Oz.
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