Follow the Yellow Brick Road to the Wonderful Wizard of Oz



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If you have ever seen a production of the Synetic Theater, you know that the company uses a lot more movement, sound, mime, gestures, music and color than language to reach the audience. Now, Synetic uses L. Frank Baum's beloved tale The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as the basis for an innovative production on self-knowledge and honesty. And true to form, much of the story is told through visual or auditory involvement rather than speech. Dorothy, witches and witches talk, but until the end of the room, none of Dorothy's friends can speak.

This Magician revolves around a young man named Oz (Robert Bowen Smith) who imagines himself a magician. His presence is woven through the adaptation of Tori Bertocci and Ryan Sellers. The piece begins with him sitting alone, building a flying machine that turns into a cyclone – presumably the cyclone sweeping the young Dorothy (Emily Whitworth) and his trusty dog ​​Toto (Jacob Yeh) from their home in Kansas to Munchkinland. The good Northern Witch (Suzy Alden) appears and gives Dorothy a pair of silver shoes. She tells Dorothy that to return home, she must follow a yellow brick road to Emerald City, face the Wizard and ask her to send her back to Kansas.

On the way, Dorothy and Toto meet a hungry Scarecrow (Dallas Tolentino) after a brain, a rusty iron man (Philip Fletcher) who wants a heart, and a cowardly Lion (Lee Liebeskind) who would like to be brave . Dorothy invites them to travel with her to meet the Sorcerer and fulfill their dreams.

Whitworth is charming as Dorothy, sweet and kind to the well-meaning creatures she meets and provocative towards the wicked and manipulative. Smith is as good as the evil Oz, creating a sense of the threatening nature of the environment around Dorothy. Tolentino lends his sensational dancer skills to the role of the Scarecrow, shattering on the stage as he had no bone and withdrew later as if by a rope invisible. The Flinch incarnation of the squeaky Man Tin is also impressive. His creation of puppets to play the story of why he does not have a heart is one of the highlights of the play. Liebeskind offers comic relief as the lion who is afraid of his own shadow, and Yeh is funny like Toto.

The ensemble plays various roles along the journey to the city of Emerald, poppies that bring to life flying monkeys. Together with the main actors, their precise and energetic work – directed by director Paata Tsikurishvili and director Ryan Sellers – is an important element contributing to this Magician's wealth . uses rectangular boxes on both sides of the stage that are hand-turned and painted with different scenes on each side to suggest everything from the Oz workshop to his throne room. Bertocci's choreography is a highlight of the Dainty China Country scene, where the princess and the joker of this country only communicate through the dance. The wonderful score of the composer Konstantine Lortkipanidze includes a playful jig, a pbadionate tango, a sinister organ to mark the arrival of Dorothy to Oz and discreet bells to complete the piece.

There is a lot of magic in the original Wizard of Oz . The production of the Synetic Theater is inscribed in Baum's tradition by emphasizing simplicity and innocence and letting the art of verbal and nonverbal narration create its own magic on the scene.

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