The Wiz, currently playing in a newly-mounted, disco revival on its national tour at the Hobby Center, opened on Broadway in 1975, played four years and garnered seven Tony Awards. It had an all-Black cast, a novel proposition at the time although black musicals had been around since Cook, Shipp, and Dunbar’s In Dahomey (1903), Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle’s Shuffle Along (1921), Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess (1935), Mike Todd’s Hot Mikado (1939), Vernon Duke’s Cabin in the Sky (1940), Oscar Hammerstein’s Carmen Jones (1943). But ‘70s Broadway saw a revival, a renaissance, of all-Black casts: see Purlie, Raisin, Once on This Island, Your Arms too Short to Box With God.
The Wiz wiped them all away with its sass, bounce, and snappy tribute to MGM’s beloved film.
This latest tour recreates the Broadway revival from 2024, with additional material from Amber Ruffin (comedian and writer for Late Night with Seth Meyers), gay bar choreography by Jaquel Knight, new sets from Academy Award-winner Hannah Beachler (Black Panther), phosphorescent costumes from Sharen Davis, and kaleidoscopic video and projection design by Daniel Brodie. It’s both a visual and aural smorgasbord. A trippy view into the past (Oh, the colors, the colors), and a paean to present day Broadway babies.
The impressive cast belts like mad, almost Handelian in their three-notes for every syllable uttered. This gospel style of singing, Mahalia Jackson on steroids, wears one out after the first few numbers. Everybody wails as if on America’s Got Talent. They are all incredibly good singers, great singers, super singers, really; but eventually they all sound the same, and the style numbs us. How much more wailing can we bear? Even when prodigiously produced?
What hinders the effectiveness is the horrendous amplification. We are well aware that the maw of the Hobby Center swallows sound like Jonah, and more than half the words from Charlie Smalls (composer and lyricist) get eaten alive. All we’re left with is sound – very loud sound. Not that there’s much nuance in this musical. It hits you over the head with one anthem after another. The two best numbers, “The Emerald City” and “Everybody Rejoice” (“Brand New Day”) were written by Timothy Graphenreed and Luther Vandross. The other songs are generic and instantly forgettable; okay, except “Ease on Down the Road,” a somewhat chart-topper by Diana Ross and Michael Jackson excepted from the execrable dinge-colored movie version directed by Herbert Ross (1978).
The cast is phenomenal, R&B belters all, and young lead Dana Cimone must be 40 going on 18. She has a voice of the ages, strong, strident, piercing. Unfortunately, she is left in the dust by her co-stars. It’s not her fault, it’s the story that leaves her as second-fiddle. (Even Garland was eclipsed by her vaudevillian hams Bolger, Lahr, and even Jack Haley. To say nothing of Margaret Hamilton.) It’s not a thankless role, but as W.C. Fields said, never share a stage with animals or children, or, we might add, characters more interesting than you. Dorothy gets lost in the shuffle with the Scarecrow (an amazingly showstopping Elijah Ahmad Lewis), the Tinman (a rubber-boned D. Jerome with amazing pipes) or Cowardly Lion (Cal Mitchell, chewing up the scenery like it’s a fatted lamb).
There are too many witches in this version. Addaperle (Amitra Fanae) and Gilda (Sherherazade) cancel each other out with their innate goodness and life lessons for Dorothy, which leaves Evilene to steal the show. Kyla Jade, as both maternal Auntie Em and the Wicked Witch of the West, knows exactly what’s she doing and how to do it. She raises the Hobby’s roof in her hot jazz anthem “Don’t Nobody Bring Me No Bad News,” surrounded by gyrating disco boys and girls in Knight’s propulsive dance routine, like the old June Taylor Dancers as if they were on platforms at South Beach. The Wiz (Alan Mingo Jr.) is a leftover from Cabaret’s Kit Kat Club’s master of ceremonies, prancing and strutting and swirling his magnificent emerald and gold cape as if on a runway. Anyway, it’s a look.
The projections are wondrous, flowing freely from one scene to another, with the set gliding open to reveal another CGI background, until at the show’s finale they become druggy doodles from Haight-Ashbury. This is appropriate, since the original show is from the ‘70s. I should mention that the first scenes in Kansas are rendered in gray and white, a lovely touch in homage to the classic opening of the Garland film.
The Wiz has aged fairly well. Will it last until this current national tour concludes in Toledo, Ohio, May 2026? As long as the performers’ voices hold out.
Performances continue through May 4. 7:30 Tuesday through Saturday, 2 p.m. Saturday; 1:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sunday at Broadway at the Hobby Center, 800 Bagby. For more information, call 713-315-7625 or visit thehobbycenter.org or broadwayatthehobbycenter.com. $40-$160.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.
