Review: A Big, Empty Revival of The Wiz Lacks the Magic of Broadway

The audience was pumped from the start, and who can blame them? The Wiz is back on Broadway for the first time since 1984. More than just a show, Charlie Smalls and William F. Brown’s African American reimagining of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a cultural touchstone; one of the first big-budget musicals to feature an entirely Black company and mostly Black creative team, earning seven Tonys along the way.

A celebration of love and family, with now-iconic songs like “Home” and “Ease on Down the Road,” The Wiz hasn’t been seen in New York since the 2009 Encores! summer production starring Ashanti. There have been other assorted false starts on the yellow brick road to the Big Apple — an acclaimed, high-tech version started and ended at La Jolla Playhouse in 2006, a starry live TV adaptation in 2015 was expected to become a first-class stage production from Cirque du Soleil, but never materialized. 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.

It’s undeniable that this Wiz, directed by Schele Williams, looks good on paper. Her team includes Beyoncé choreographer JaQuel Knight, Oscar-winning Black Panther production designer Hannah Beachler on sets, a 20-piece orchestra, and a big company featuring Wayne Brady and Deborah Cox in cameos. So where does it all go wrong? Oh, Toto, almost everywhere.

Twenty-four-year-old newcomer Nichelle Lewis stars as Dorothy, the big-city teen who loses her mom and goes to live on her family farm in Kansas. When a tornado transports her from the sepia-toned Midwest to the technicolor land of Oz and her house falls on a wicked witch, Dorothy sets off to find her way back, collecting a Scarecrow (Avery Wilson), a Tinman (Phillip Johnson Richardson), and Cowardly Lion (Kyle Ramar Freeman) along the way. They hope that the Wiz (Brady, having fun in what amounts to 15 minutes of stage time) can get them what they’re missing — a brain, a heart, courage, and the ability to get home — but they quickly find out that Evillene (Melody A. Betts), the Wicked Witch of the West, is hot on their trail.

Honestly, Brown’s book is a collection of episodes that never really cohered and isn’t all that funny. It’s augmented here with new jokes and roasts from comedian Amber Ruffin, which the actors deliver with relish (particularly the understated Richardson and deliciously funny Freeman). Ruffin hasn’t figured out a way to solve the structural problems, but the big heart is still intact, so it’ll do. And there are far worse ways to spend two hours than by listening to a great band funk its way through Joseph Joubert’s jubilant orchestrations. I wish I could say the same about Jon Weston’s sound design, which muffles the vocals to the point of incomprehensibility.

Pretty much the rest of the production showcases the perils of easing on down the road for six months before coming to Broadway. Beachler’s set (an LED screen, some flimsy sliding panels, and a couple of big platforms) is clearly built to fit in a house of any size, but it’s particularly dwarfed on the vast stage of the Marquis, which is without physical pieces for whole scenes. Ryan J. O’Gara’s colorful lighting and Daniel Brodie’s animated sci-fi projections do all the heavy lifting, and they’re fun, for a few minutes at least. The same can be said of Sharen Davis’s costumes, which range from completely original to high school costume closet chic. They must have blown the budget on Cox’s mirror-shard Glinda dress, which absolutely reflected in my eyes when it caught the light and gave me a floater.

The dancers give Knight’s repetitive choreography their all but are clearly bored or tired — I’ve never seen so many ensemble members going through the motions all at once, especially on a critics’ night in the run-up to Tony nominations. Williams’s direction is similar: bare minimum, dead behind the eyes. You don’t realize how tricky scene transitions are until you watch the Cowardly Lion, Tin Man, and Scarecrow just slowly back off stage like they’re in a Family Guy cutaway. There’s no connection, no chemistry, no soul. This is as lifeless a production as I’ve ever seen on Broadway, and, quite frankly, it’s shocking.

Certain performers manage to overcome it. Freeman looks like he’s having the best time of his life as the Lion. Neither Betts (Evillene) nor Allyson Kaye Daniel (as Addaperle, whose big song “He’s the Wiz” is given to the generally bland Cox) encounter a line they can’t land a laugh on. And while Lewis, in her Broadway debut, could use some lessons in presence, her vocal technique is lovely. She does justice to “Home,” the song everyone knows and everyone wants to hear. Coming at the very end of the show, it almost makes the whole production worth it, but Lewis, her co-stars, and the ticketbuyers deserve better.