by Edward Hill
Ladysmith Chronicle

The trouble with watching a classic musical like the Wizard of Oz is there tends to be few surprises. Most people know the story. A precocious young girl in ruby-red shoes dances and sings her way through weird world of Oz. A wicked witch is battled, friends are made and a lesson is learned that there really is no place like home.

But while the songs are familiar and the journey along the Yellow Brick Road is a known quantity, the Chemainus Theatre has produced a play that is emotionally gripping, visually stunning and pure enjoyment from start to finish.

It is, without a doubt, the theatre's most ambitious play to date. The choreography sets the tempo with more than 300 different lighting and sound cues, and the large cast of supporting actors flip between costume changes in a blink.

Experimental theatre it is not, which isn't a bad thing. Director Jeremy Tow has done what he has set out to accomplish: a worthy stage reproduction of the 1939 film.

Recall the movie starts out in black and white, and moves to colour when Dorothy lands in Oz. The play manages to pull off virtually the same effect with a sepia-like opening set on Dorothy's Kansas farm, contrasted with the bright and flowery Munchkin Land in Oz.

Creating a play like this, one of the obvious questions is how does it cope with a script that requires Toto, little terrier dog, diminutive munchkins and a tornado scene?

They have gone the route that is elegant, disarmingly obvious and requires the audience to become engrossed in the play. The Wizard of Oz may take place in la-la land but the audience needs to be "in the moment" to accept what they are seeing.

Fortunately, that's not hard to do with this cast of characters. Alison MacDonald is a perfect fit for Dorothy in energy and style. She brings a wide-eyed sense of wonderment and innocence to the stage, and from Somewhere Over the Rainbow to the Merry Old Land of Oz, her singing is beautiful and unwavering.

Perhaps most importantly though, MacDonald deftly draws empathy from the audience. Her fears are our fears - the fear of losing Toto, of being lost, scared and alone. She brings the audience to the edge of their seats and into the moment. In a story that is so well known, that kind of emotional engagement is about all you can ask for. It doesn't hurt that an eminently talented gang of cohorts accompanies McDonald. The adventure through Oz wouldn't be much without Lindsay Sterk (Scarecrow), Mark DuMez (Tin Man) and Andrew Legg (Cowardly Lion). All three men have a powerful presence on stage, and imbibe personality in to the characters without losing the essence of what they represent. Chemainus Theatre darling Samantha McKenna, as the good witch Glinda, glides in with effortless grace, while Norma Bowen, the Wicked Witch of the West, is chilling in her menacing attempts at revenge on Dorothy. Bowen's trap-door entrances and exits are flawless, giving some of the most eye-catching sleight-of-hand effects in the play.

The obstinate gatekeeper Damon Calderwood and Neil Gallagher as Oz, the old snake-oil salesman himself (last see as the insane Teddy Roosevelt in Arsenic and Old Lace) round out the main ensemble.

With a competent and beautiful production of The Wizard of Oz, the Chemainus Theatre has plenty to celebrate. It opened its hotel and production centre more-or-less on time two weeks ago, while at the same time producing a play that sets a high bar for all future productions.

As sung by MacDonald in Somewhere Over the Rainbow and which aptly adorned the official hotel opening ribbon, "The dreams that you dare to dream really do come true."