We discussed The Sound of Music Live and Peter Pan Live here, so I was wondering if anyone else watched The Wiz.
I thought it was way better than the two previous live musicals. Instead of casting a wooden singer for the lead, the producers chose the Dorothy, unknown Shanice Williams, in a open casting call. She brought youth and sweetness, as well as singing and acting ability, to her role. And everybody in this production could sing. The costumes and makeup showed a Broadway-level imagination and attention to detail that worked for TV, both in closeups and far away.
Fantastic choreography, especially the crow scene with Scarecrow and the voguing scene in the Emerald City. I would have liked to have seen more of Cirque de Soleil, though.
Major beef: too many commercials. Way too many commercials.
I’ll be interested to hear your reaction, college_query. The pacing was very much affected by the frequent, long commercial breaks. It’ll be a different experience to speed through them. The pacing was Big Dramatic Number, long commercial break, Big Dramatic Number, long commercial break, repeat. Watching the show without commercials, oddly, might mean the big numbers come too close together.
I watched. Agree that the lead did a much better job than either of her predecessors, Carrie Underwood and Alison Williams. She really held her own playing opposite some real stars.
I really enjoyed it. Watched it with DD and she did, too. It sounded much better than the last two. Especially after voices warmed up a little and everyone settled down, it was really well done. I liked the dancers representing the storm and the poppies.
Much too long for me. I ended up wandering around the house with it on in the background …I might have even gone to bed before it was over. I like theater live, not so much on TV. Made for TV theater even feels like an oxymoron.
I liked it, I liked the dancing and the acting (the snot ball critic in the Times, of course, was saying “well, only David Allen Greer could really act”. The only thing I wondered about was the singing, whether they were really singing live. Some of the singers (especially the woman playing Glinda, the good witch of the north), have real voices, but I wondered if they were lip synching to prerecorded tracks, or if they were really singing live, it sounded too perfect to me to be live singing (compared to the prior two performances, where they definitely were singing live). I too loved the crows (they were very crow like, attitude wise lol), and the poppies were amazing (how they dance on heels like that, I’ll never know!:). It was long, but then again, it worked well, for the interminable letting the dog out, or bathroom breaks, that seem to come along with age:)
I was thoroughly bored by it, and wound up turning it off. The performances were good, especially Greer, Ne-Yo, and Queen Latifah, the choreography was fine, but . . . the book and the songs are really, really weak, and there was only so much the actors could do to inject life. And the “live” stage special effects came across as tinny on TV, nothing like the sense of spectacle the show needed.
I watched most of it and taped the rest. Way too many long commercials! But great job by the new Dorothy. I wasn’t wild about the new songs and since DD has done the show twice I was familiar with the stage show. So it was fun to see the familiar songs and how they were done. I just kept thinking about where was Toto? They had a dog in promos they did on the Today show and many stage shows use live dogs so not sure why they didn’t have one!
There was a dog in Kansas, but Toto didn’t go to Oz. Possibly they couldn’t get a Toto well enough trained.
akmom, I’m not familiar with the show. Which songs came from the Broadway show, which were introduced in the movie, and which were new for this production?
I like the way the show was shot, too. Too often, dance numbers on TV or in the movies are shot in close-up, so you can’t see the choreography. In this production, we got plenty of wide shots.
I had never seen the show before, either on stage or in the movie, so I had no idea what to expect. I watched pieces of the show last night because I am a huge fan of Queen Latifah. (Her performance in Chicago should have won her an Oscar, IMO.)
I didn’t like it at all. I didn’t like the show itself – it felt stilted and forced. I thought the performers were very good, but I didn’t like Queen Latifah’s performance at all.
I thought the camera angles were odd and didn’t let me see the choreography in its entirety.
I watched a good part of it. I thought it was much better than the previous two live productions. Liked Shanice Williams a lot, very talented and what a break to get this role at an open audition. I thought Queen Latifah was a let-down although I had sort of lost interest a bit for most of her appearance. I thought the choreography and costuming was very strong.
@“Cardinal Fang” - I watched it (more or less) last night. H wasn’t a fan and kept complaining. The frequent commercial breaks were a pain, although I could race through them. It definitely had pacing issues - hard to keep interested. To appease H I fast forwarded through parts of several sections. I thought the performers were good - MUCH better than Carrie Underwood’s attempt to act in The Sound of Music.
I had only seen the movie version before, but I was looking forward to a NYC re-imagining of the story, and that’s not the way they presented it.
Agree that the choreography and costuming was strong.
I only saw half of it. It was just okay, but they had a hard act to follow. I loved the costumes! Dorothy really wasn’t impressive her voice just wasn’t that strong compared to Stephanie Mills. One of my favorite parts was when “crazy eyes” Uzo Aduba sang.
@Cardinal Fang - I can tell you that the scarecrow’s song was not original. My son played the scarecrow in high school, so I purposely watched to hear that song again. I was really disappointed and switched channels afterwards. That said, I did like the beginning. Choreography and costumes were wonderful.
I dislike The Wiz as a show–don’t care for Wicked, either, so I guess I just don’t like re-imaginings of a beloved classic. I skipped the telecast and just watched selected excerpts (the whole show is available online). Overall, I found the sets and costumes to be so over the top that they were headache inducing. There were some fine performances. I never knew Ne-Yo could dance–songwriting, singing, dancing–is there nothing he can’t do? For some reason Shanice’s voice didn’t appeal to me. Not sure if it was her somewhat squeaky tone or occasionally odd phrasing, but she was certainly a better choice than Diana Ross was in the movie and a better choice than the stunt casting we’ve come to expect from the live musical experiment.
I’m happy the ratings were better than Peter Pan’s, and given the great reviews, I imagine the re-broadcast on 12/19 will pull a big audience. Anything that supports musical theater is okay by me! And I think showing that members of current musical royalty buy into the genre will really legitimize it in the eyes of a skeptical younger generation.