![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Jun. 18th, 2011 09:42 pmWent up to Birmingham to see Treyc Cohen in The Wiz.
What can I say, but A MUSICAL STAR IS BORN! Treyc performed brilliantly and sang all her numbers with full-on soul and emotion. Straight after she left X Factor she said musical theatre was the direction she wanted to go in, and this show proves she has found her vocation there.
This production has a British flavour, with Dorothy being from Birmingham instead of Kansas (and the Wizard turns out to be from Leeds, a nice nod since the show's also going there). With generational authenticity, Aunt Em and Uncle Henry speak in Jamaican-British dialect while Dorothy's accent is pure Brummie. There's a few little modernisations, like the Wicked Witch of the East being killed by a flat-screen TV falling on her. Melanie la Barrie was excellent as Addaperle and Aunt Em. There was plenty of visual humour on display and the set design, especially in the Emerald City, was quite stunning. In a nice touch, the entry to 'Oz' was designed as a night club with a green neon sign, with the Gatekeeper wearing sunshades and a bright green bouncer's tux. When the Wiz presents the Scarecrow with his diploma, to convince him he has brains, I wonder if I was the only one who thought he should have said he'd acquired it from one of those internet 'universities'?
The choreographer was a familiar name to those of us who were youngsters in the mid-80s - Paul J. Medford, ex-EastEnder whose duet with Letitia Dean Something Outta Nothing made the charts.
On the train pulling out of Birmingham New Street I tweeted my appreciation of the show and got a thank-you tweet from Treyc. What a charming lady she is.
National tour please, Birmingham Rep.
What can I say, but A MUSICAL STAR IS BORN! Treyc performed brilliantly and sang all her numbers with full-on soul and emotion. Straight after she left X Factor she said musical theatre was the direction she wanted to go in, and this show proves she has found her vocation there.
This production has a British flavour, with Dorothy being from Birmingham instead of Kansas (and the Wizard turns out to be from Leeds, a nice nod since the show's also going there). With generational authenticity, Aunt Em and Uncle Henry speak in Jamaican-British dialect while Dorothy's accent is pure Brummie. There's a few little modernisations, like the Wicked Witch of the East being killed by a flat-screen TV falling on her. Melanie la Barrie was excellent as Addaperle and Aunt Em. There was plenty of visual humour on display and the set design, especially in the Emerald City, was quite stunning. In a nice touch, the entry to 'Oz' was designed as a night club with a green neon sign, with the Gatekeeper wearing sunshades and a bright green bouncer's tux. When the Wiz presents the Scarecrow with his diploma, to convince him he has brains, I wonder if I was the only one who thought he should have said he'd acquired it from one of those internet 'universities'?
The choreographer was a familiar name to those of us who were youngsters in the mid-80s - Paul J. Medford, ex-EastEnder whose duet with Letitia Dean Something Outta Nothing made the charts.
On the train pulling out of Birmingham New Street I tweeted my appreciation of the show and got a thank-you tweet from Treyc. What a charming lady she is.
National tour please, Birmingham Rep.
