Poor L. Frank Baum (of “Wizard of Oz” fame) desperately wants to be Melville or Dickens—to write substantial novels for adults. But this path is hard, slogging work fraught with writer’s block. Baum’s problem is that his Emerald City fantasies flow from his mind like a tsunami, and make him the most treasured children’s book author of his era. When “printing ‘Oz’ books is like printing money,” it’s hard to stop.
This captivating COVID-delayed new chamber musical by freeFall’s talented stalwarts, Michael Raabe (music & lyrics) and Eric Davis (book & lyrics) is an unmitigated joy as it explores Baum’s conflicted impulses. Davis’s whip smart book moves briskly to connect the melodious 18-song score, often using fan letters accompanying projected portraits of porcelain doll-faced children who alternately gush, cajole, and finally, beg Baum not to abandon his “Oz” series.
Raabe has shown over the years as freeFall’s resident musical director that he’s a master arranger with a comprehensive knowledge of American Songbook standards, most of which arise from the Golden Age of Broadway which began in 1943 with “Oklahoma” (when show tunes were also top 40) until they were ultimately supplanted in the late-1960s when rock and roll elbowed Broadway off the radio.
This delightful, tuneful score calls upon all these old school styles. The terrific musicians begin with a catchy vamp as we’re invited “let’s go on an adventure,” and the entire five-person company takes us off to the races for a sweeping 15-minute plus Sondheimesque opening sequence, “In Other Lands Than Ours.” We’re transported past a gyrating mini-farmhouse to Egypt and the Nile complete with pith helmets and a quartet of chairs which transform as a walkway to the Sphinx. Suddenly, we’re red hot with an eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, then spinning across the Parisian skyline with a panoramic monochrome of a dancing Eiffel Tower, and ultimately gazing upon Lady Liberty craving to “put something in the world that wasn’t there before.”
Set designer Tom Hansen provides a three quarter round playing surface. Upstage is a diaphanous floor-to-ceiling curtain with luxurious fullness. To our right, stairs lead up to Baum’s desk flanked by two columns. Sconces and a turned spindle balustrade complete the inner sanctum of his emerald colored walls. Downstage of the curtain are two tall windows topped with dark wood crown molding. While they initially seem to be composed of hundreds of leaded stained-glass Victorian diamonds, the windows are actually projection screens for Davis’s unfettered imagination. He’s proven a master at using projections to transport audiences and here he excels again. Often, still black and white images evoke time and place, but he also uses moving color imagery to great effect heightening the emotional impact of the Act 1 finale and allowing Frank thrillingly to confront his inner self in “Man Behind the Curtain” while evoking the Wizard from the iconic 1939 film. Completing the dazzling visuals, is lighting designer Dalton Hamilton, who uses every texture and color over the rainbow.
The superb cast, led by the stellar David Foley, Jr. as the unabashed dreamer Baum, all shine—individually and collectively. Apart from Foley, the rest of the cast plays multiple characters with grace and ease. Melissa Minyard, so splendid in freeFall’s “Light in the Piazza” and “End of the Rainbow,” still shines as the less showy Maud, Baum’s wife. From the jaunty “Mr. Baum,” the rapturous “He Tells Stories,” to the touching ballad “Mother, Sister, Friend,” her clarion soprano and subtle acting touch your heart.
Elizabeth L. Meckler gets to embody the sweet, optimistic Dorothy we’ve come to know from Judy Garland, but she really shines as “Miss Cuttenclip” where the cast makes giant paper dolls in an energetic number that’s part Russian kalinka, part “Officer Krupke.”
Davis cleverly uses the ever versatile Roxanne Fay as Baum’s mother-in-law, the suffragette Matilda Joslyn Gage. She appears in a cloud of smoke from the “astral plane” as a mouthpiece for some pithy political observations for modern audiences—seems like the fight for women’s rights and the separation of church and state never goes away. Fay also leads the company in “Believe It, or Not,” which begins as a charming soft shoe before morphing uptempo. In addition, Fay’s versatility in several well wrought cameos seems effortless.
Charming newcomer Drew H. Wells appears as numerous characters, including Baum’s son, but also in thrilling tight harmony duets with Foley as “Oz” illustrator, W.W. Denslow (“On the Same Page”), and the iconic Scarecrow (“Not There: Brain”).
Wig designer Michelle Hart has styled “Gibson girl” silhouettes which instantly transport viewers back to fin-de-siècle America. Combined with David Covach’s incisively detailed costumes, Davis and his actors conjure a smock-wearing painter sporting an oversized striped bow along the Seine, giant flowers giddy with huge red petal collars or the glittering witches, with Maud as Glinda in a sparkling crown that soars two full feet above her brow.
Birthing a new musical is a Sisyphean endeavor; indeed, the history on the road to Broadway is littered with the carcasses of failed shows even from our most acclaimed practitioners. While freeFall’s “Oz” isn’t a revolutionary creation, it’s absolutely a very successful one. Davis and Raabe’s score entertains as it introduces audiences to the compelling (and generally unknown) narrative of a beloved author’s “shifting sands” of insecurities and struggles. And it leaves us with a clear “idealized and magical” vision: the very wise conclusion that perhaps “what you’re seeking is already inside you.”
