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Monday, June 22, 2009

Follow the Yellow Wiz Road

Ending on July 5, "The Wiz" just has a couple of weeks to wow audiences. This revival features a few of our beloved stars, including Orlando Jones, Ashanti, Tischina Arnold and LaChanze from Broadway's "The Color Purple".

I have to admit I had low expectations for "The Wiz" as I walked in the theater. As we waited for the show to start, I stared at the seemingly empty stage, in looking at it I was convinced that it would be a very low budget production. My impression didn't get any better, the seats around me weren't filling-up fast enough and when the show started some seats were still empty.

My first impression was wrong, the scene design constantly changes and deserves praise. A cast of dancers set-up the stage for the different scenes and dance to portray those that cannot be remade on stage such as the tornado. The only criticism I have is that cast needs to work on their cues, I noticed that some of the actors had a tendency of missing their marks.

Overall, the play was actually very good. Ashanti wowed me by performing to higher pitch than any of her songs in "real life". LaChanze is an extremely good singer and she definitely pulled-off the good witch part. Tischina, plays the evil witch and is my favorite character; she proves that she can blow. I do recommend this play to all who love Broadway. I don't necessarily think this play is for kids because of some sexual innuendos made during the play. The play does have a moral that comes at the right time in our economy and it is, "believe in yourself", no wonder the stars of the play and BET believed in this story.

--Wife

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