Posted 8:28 PM by Gene

Yet another reason our culture stinks: Someone's written a musical prequel to The Wizard of Oz that's allegedly headed to Broadway. True, people will never stop adapting the L. Frank Baum work -- we forget there was a hit musical (two if you count Babes in Toyland, which was a kind of sequel), at least five film adaptations, and possibly three radio series before Arthur Freed tried it; and afterwards Liza Minnelli starred in a badly animated feature, and Mouth from the South attempted an animated kiddie TV show for ABC among his too many other line extensions; and of course there was The Wiz. At least Charlie Smalls (who wrote its entertaining score) could say he started from scratch, with an all-black version; less that kind of gimmick the problem with adapting such a classic now is the unmoving shadow of Arlen and Harburg, and, of course, "Over the Rainbow" (which I posit has too many resemblances to a movement in a nearly contemporaneous sonata by the unjustly neglected Russian master Nicolai Medtner to be Arlen's, but that's another story). It is telling that the lengthy press release does not even mention the composer, a sure sign this is a piece of junk, even if a producer has lured Kristin Chenoweth into the lead. Our culture will never get better with copies of copies -- or worse, doomed flailings over insuperable classics.

A footnote: The anonymous composer is Stephen Schwartz, who had three hits in quick succession in the seventies and then disappeared, re-emerging for a series of forgettable Eisners. His most famous tune is the liturgical cliche "Preeeeeeee-eee-eeeeee-paaaaaaaare Yeeeeee thuuuuh Way ooooooooof the Loooooooooord," the anthem of millions of bad Catholic guitar players. If Wicked is anything like the most recent Broadway show with his music, a misbegotten reworking of Studs Terkel's Working, we're talking flop big-time.