I got a £25 Rush Ticket from to say is to see the second performance of this revival. It was a good seat slightly to the side a few rows from the front of the Royal Circle.
The munchkins were quite tall for munchkins, the special effects tended to focus on projectors with some limited scenery, and Toto had assistance from a puppeteer. However, it was still an entertaining show.
There were a couple of small possible mistakes. At one point when running around with her companions Dorothty appeared to fall over, and later in the second half in the melting scene, the victim clearly walked off stage rather than disappear through any trapdoor (but that was possibly linked to a bigger problem that occurred.
A couple of minutes into the second half there was a show stop. The problem was with the Wicked Witch of the West’s castle and she was left standing on it when it didn’t move like it should have done.
A man came on stage to say there was a technical problem. The auditorium lights stayed off, and the Witch walked off stage, then after a few more minutes, a company manager came on to say it was a problem with a piece of scenery that wouldn’t move and they were trying to get it working.
The lights came up a bit and then after a few minutes, Jason Manford came on still in his Cowardly Lion costume and did a bit of stand-up to entertain the audience for the next 10-15 mins until he was that the show could continue.
There was less scenery after that (not sure if that was how it was meant to be or if that was due to the problems) but it continued and Jason Manford got a well-deserved ovation at the end in addition to some possible in jokes added about how hard he had been working.
8/10
