CityLife

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Octagon Theatre, Bolton

November 24, 2011

THERE’S no place like... Bolton. That’s the premise for the Octagon’s feelgood Christmas show, a modern adaptation of L Frank Baum’s enduring tale of Dorothy’s journey through magical Oz to find her home, only to discover it was deep in her heart all along.

But this home is a terrace in Farnworth and our Dorothy is a lippy teenager more concerned about a new pair of trainers than respecting her parents.

This update of the children’s classic is very much for The X Factor generation, with new upbeat songs by musical director Barbara Hockaday, red baseball boots rather than ruby slippers, a rapping Queen of the Mice and the Good Witch of the North riding around on a pink scooter (both Ruth Alexander Rubin). And though, as in The X Factor, the singing is rather variable and the entertainment value comes in fits and starts, in the end it is all good fun.

Ellie Paskell, who played Maxine Barlow in BBC1’s Waterloo Road, gets the best out of the songs and plays a convincingly modern Dorothy, in turns streetwise and then girly and sweet, caressing her cute glove-puppet Toto.

A team of writers at the Octagon came up with the adaptation under the guidance of director Elizabeth Newman. They have done a decent job and stick largely to the classic storyline and its sentiments, though the only rainbow is in the multi-coloured set and costumes.

There are more laughs than, say, the 1939 film version – with a groovy, hippy Cowardly Lion in a kaftan (Lloyd Gorman) and a Scarecrow (Paul-Ryan Carberry) with a great line in malapropisms – but most of the humour is directed at the younger end of the audience. Not panto-style naughtiness for the adults here.

Local children play munch-kins, flying monkeys and Emer-ald City residents and though charming, give the production even more of a school play feel.

But enthusiasm and verve more than make up for any lack of slickness. Like the Wizard shows us, you don’t have to have perfection, and many a child will believe there is no place like Bolton this Christmas.

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