The Wiz
Opening Night: April 17, 2024
Theater: Marquis Theatre
Website: wizmusical.com
Everybody look around, there’s reason to rejoice! The Tony Award-winning Best Musical that took the world by storm is back. For the first time in decades, The Wiz returns home to the American stage with an all-new Broadway-bound adaptation. The Pre-Broadway National Tour launched this past September in Baltimore, where the beloved musical premiered 50 years ago.
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April 17, 2024
All of which is to say that “The Wiz” is a pleasant, serviceable time at the theater, but as a new production of a musical with a legacy of bringing Blackness to one of Hollywood’s and Broadway’s favorite fairy tales, it’s less satisfying.
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April 18, 2024
Still, these missteps can’t smudge out a defining truth: “The Wiz” is a certifiable, soulful great time. And thankfully, it’s back home.
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April 17, 2024
But the maximalist revival that opened at the Marquis Theater on Broadway tonight, following a 13-city national tour, diminishes some of the show’s reliable pleasures with unmitigated, candy-colored exuberance.
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April 17, 2024
Because I must unfortunately report that the new revival of that musical, which opened Wednesday night at the Marquis Theatre, is not the dazzler that fans have waited so long for. Quite the contrary. And that’s bad news, indeed.
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April 17, 2024
This production, which is the equivalent of a disco-themed karaoke party, just makes me feel disappointed.
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April 17, 2024
But the secret sauce here is Amber Ruffin, who’s credited with “additional material for this production.” No way did William F. Brown’s book for the original 1974 Broadway production of “The Wiz” offer this many inspired one-liners.
READ THE REVIEWApril 17, 2024
The new revival of the 1975 musical by Charlie Smalls (et al) and William F. Brown updates some references (with the help of Amber Ruffin, fresh off her success with Some Like It Hot) and takes what worked from the 1978 movie (namely the Michael Jackson-as-Scarecrow solo “You Can’t Win”) and the popular TV musical (the swag, my god, the swag) to produce what may be the best version of The Wiz to date.
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April 17, 2024
But although the talent is all over the stage, it’s also trapped in confused and even ugly packaging. This revival traveled around the country before coming in New York, and indeed it looks like a cheap touring production rather than something that was honed and improved.
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April 17, 2024
Unfortunately, the one we’ve ended up getting, now at the Marquis Theatre after a national tour (and you can tell), is so pitiful that it does a major disservice to a genuinely groundbreaking piece of theater.
READ THE REVIEWApril 17, 2024
While this production, directed by Schele Williams, could have been more spectacularly maximalist (not relying on a video background), its gentle updates to the music as an indication of The Wiz’s legacy nonetheless offer an entertaining time at the theatre.
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I first caught it in Chicago, when the production remained a bit of a mess, and can report that the Broadway version reflects a lot of good new work.
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April 17, 2024
The real riches are in the cast’s connection to each other, and to the material. Its young leads, as well as their more experienced counterparts, are having the time of their lives and making the most of their roles, singing with an infectious joy typically missing from oft-retread properties. The road to success might have a few bricks missing, but it’s a golden one nonetheless.
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